Captured former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro has added Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official from former President Ronald Reagan‘s administration, to his legal team as he faces sweeping narco-terrorism and weapons charges in federal court in New York.
Fein entered an appearance on Maduro’s behalf in a court filing Tuesday, one day after Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, pleaded not guilty during a brief arraignment before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan.
At the hearing, Maduro declared himself a “decent man” and claimed he had been “kidnapped” from his home in Caracas, insisting he remains Venezuela’s legitimate president. U.S. authorities captured Maduro over the weekend and transferred him to New York to face prosecution.
Fein served as Associate Deputy Attorney General and as General Counsel to the Federal Communications Commission during the Reagan administration. He has testified before Congress more than 200 times and has long positioned himself as a civil libertarian critic of U.S. national security policy.
He previously represented Lon Snowden, the father of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and served as a senior policy adviser to Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign. In an interview published Tuesday by Al Jazeera, Fein sharply criticized the Trump administration’s actions toward Venezuela, calling the seizure of Venezuelan oil assets and the displacement of the country’s sovereignty “acts of war.”
Maduro was represented at Monday’s hearing by Washington defense attorney Barry Pollack, who also entered a formal appearance shortly before the proceeding.
