Venezuelan Leader Rejects Report Claiming She Pledged To Cooperate With Trump Before Maduro Was Captured: 'Fake'

The Venezuelan regime rejected a recent report claiming that interim president Delcy Rodriguez and her brother Jorge pledged to cooperate with the Trump administration before U.S. troops executed the operation that captured authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro earlier this month.

The social media account of the presidential palace, Miraflores, said the report was fake but did not elaborate further. It posted an image of The Guardian's article stamped with a red label reading "fake," but did not elaborate further.

The article in question claimed that the assurance from the Rodriguez siblings came before Maduro was captured. They added that his removal would be a welcome outcome. "She said, 'I'll work with whatever is the aftermath,'" a source detailed to the British outlet.

The Guardian added that communications between the then-Vice President and U.S. officials through Qatari intermediaries began in the fall and continued after President Donald Trump urged Maduro to leave Venezuela in a phone call in November, a possibility he rejected.

All sources quoted by the outlet noted that the siblings offered to work with U.S. authorities if Maduro was removed but didn't help to do so, clarifying that they did not collaborate to topple him.

Trump quickly announced that Delcy Rodriguez would be Venezuela's interim president after the operation. He has since said the administrations are "getting along very well" and that she is "giving us everything that we feel is necessary."

Elsewhere, Russia's ambassador to the South American country said Moscow knows the name of those who "betrayed" Maduro.

Speaking to Rossiya-24, Serguei Melik-Bagdasarov said "local law enforcement agents didn't do all they could" during the operation that took place on January 3.

He went on to say that actions that ended in the operations began before the raid, noting that "if what happened here long before this happened could be called treason, naturally it was."

"We know the names of those traitors who fled Venezuela and systematically worked for U.S. intelligence," the ambassador added. It is unclear who Melik-Bagdasarov was referring to.