On January 3, 2026, President Donald Trump deployed 150-plus aircraft and a Delta Force ground element into Caracas in Operation Absolute Resolve — capturing Nicolás Maduro Moros and his wife Cilia Flores and flying them to the United States. They are now held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn pending trial in United States of America v. Nicolás Maduro Moros et al. before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Attorney General Pamela Bondi laid out the charges: narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices. That last pair — the NFA charges — is where I want to focus, because some in the Second Amendment community are reading something into them that simply isn’t there.
Was This Legal? Yes. Here’s the Short Version.
The hand-wringing on MSNBC and CNN about the “legality” of this operation was settled in 1989. When the United States went into Panama to arrest Manuel Noriega on drug trafficking charges, a federal court addressed exactly this question. The controlling precedent — United States v. Noriega, 746 F. Supp. 1506 (S.D. Fla. 1990), affirmed by the Eleventh Circuit at 117 F.3d 1206 (11th Cir. 1997) — establishes that the manner of a forcible extraterritorial arrest does not defeat U.S. criminal jurisdiction. If someone overseas directs crimes at the United States, we can reach out and bring them here.
JD Vance put it well on X: “Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narco-terrorism. You do not get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas.” That’s the law. Full stop.
As for the War Powers Resolution of 1973, 50 U.S.C. §§ 1541–1548 — it imposes a 48-hour congressional reporting requirement and a 60-day operational limit. Every president since Nixon has argued the Resolution is unconstitutional as an interference with Article II commander-in-chief authority. And even if Congress wanted to fight Trump over it, the courts would decline to referee. Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), and its foreign-affairs progeny establish that separation-of-powers disputes between the executive and legislative branches over military operations are political questions — not ones for judges. The courts would punt.
Maduro Wasn’t Even a Real President
One more thing worth noting before we get to the NFA counts: there is no serious argument that this operation “toppled a foreign government.” The Biden administration did not recognize Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate president. Trump I did not. Trump II did not. The European Union did not. If the famously squishy Europeans are on the record saying Maduro was illegitimate, you are not removing a head of state — you are arresting a cartel boss who happened to occupy a presidential palace.
The NFA Machine Gun Counts — What They Mean (and Don’t Mean)
Here is where my frustration with some of the commentary boils over a little.
The indictment includes charges under the National Firearms Act, 26 U.S.C. § 5861 — specifically, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices. I have seen some folks in the Second Amendment community treat this as some kind of validation of NFA jurisprudence, or worry that it reinforces the machine gun ban. Neither reaction is right.
Here is my read: the DOJ charged what it could charge to put a narco-terrorist in federal prison, and the NFA machinegun provisions were among the tools in the box. That is not a commentary on whether those provisions are constitutionally sound as applied to law-abiding Americans. The charges exist. They are being used against Maduro. Fine.
But let’s be clear-eyed about what we are not getting out of this. The current Supreme Court does not have the votes to strike down the NFA’s machinegun provisions. I have been arguing for years that we need the right case, the right facts, and — critically — the right Court composition before pushing that issue to SCOTUS. We do not have that today. If a future Justice replaces one of the current anti-Second Amendment seats, then perhaps we revisit the question. Until then, a machine gun challenge to this Court is a bootless exercise that risks entrenching bad precedent.
America First — and That’s the Real Story Here
The Maduro operation is an America First action on multiple fronts the Second Amendment community should celebrate.
First, shutting down the fentanyl pipeline. When Trump locked down the southern border, the cartels shifted to speedboat routes across the open ocean. Venezuela — which Maduro and the Sinaloa Cartel, Los Zetas, FARC-EP, and ELN were all using as a narco-state launching pad — was a primary source. Overdose deaths in the United States fell dramatically in 2025. That trend does not hold without going to the source.
Second, energy. Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves on earth — approximately 303 billion barrels, larger than Saudi Arabia’s roughly 267 billion. Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías and then Maduro nationalized and effectively destroyed the Western oil infrastructure that had been built there. American companies can now return to Venezuela with U.S. government backing, reinvigorate that production, and drive down global oil prices. Cheaper energy hits Russia, China, Iran, and other adversarial oil exporters where it hurts most.
The Bottom Line
The arrest of Nicolás Maduro Moros was clearly legal under both domestic and international legal frameworks, precedented by Noriega, insulated from judicial second-guessing by the political question doctrine, and justified by the president’s commander-in-chief authority. The NFA machine gun charges in the indictment are a prosecutorial tool, not a Second Amendment event. Don’t lose sleep over them — and don’t read a victory into them that isn’t there.
The real victory is an America First president doing what he was elected to do: shutting down the supply chains that are killing Americans, weakening our adversaries, and rebuilding our energy independence. That is something worth celebrating.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.