The U.S. government played no part in the apparent assassination attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a top Trump administration official said Sunday.
“I can say unequivocally there is no U.S. government involvement in this at all,” national security adviser John Bolton said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Video showed a dramatic scene Saturday of Maduro and others being startled when two drones armed with explosives flew in Maduro’s direction as he delivered a speech in the capital of Caracas during a ceremony honoring the Venezuelan military.
Venezuelan officials claim seven members of the National Guard were injured in the attack.
Maduro accused Colombia’s outgoing president, Juan Manuel Santos and “financiers” in the U.S. for the attack. Colombia has denied the accusation, calling it “baseless.”
Bolton told host Chris Wallace that he spoke with the head diplomatic official in Caracas, ensuring Americans in Venezuela are safe. He also suggested that the attack could have been “a pretext set up by the Maduro regime itself.”
“He’s made accusations accusing the outgoing president of Columbia responsibility, what he calls the extreme right wing in Venezuela, that means the vast opposition to his authoritarian role and he’s blamed unnamed [financiers] in the United States,” Bolton said. “These are things he has said before and you have to take them for what they are worth. If the government of Venezuela has hard information that they want to present to us that would show a potential violation of U.S. criminal law, we’ll take a serious look at it. But in the meantime, I think what we really should focus on is the corruption and the oppression of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.”
Venezuelan officials said they detained six individuals on Sunday in connection to the attack.
