Maduro Pleads Not Guilty To Drug Trafficking Charges

NEW YORK (AP) — Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro has declared himself “innocent” and a “decent man” as he is pleading not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges. Maduro told a judge in New York on Monday, “I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country.” Maduro was making his first appearance in an American courtroom on the narco-terrorism charges the Trump administration used to justify capturing him and bringing him to New York. The courtroom appearance was Maduro’s first since he and his wife were seized from their home Saturday in a stunning middle-of-the-night military operation. It kicks off the U.S. government’s most consequential prosecution in decades of a foreign head of state.