Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López responded this Friday to testimonies released this week by Mike Pompeo, who was US Secretary of State during Donald Trump’s administration, where he confesses the plans they put in place and others, who are considering taking action against the South American country, including a military attack.
“Another confession from the person who was Secretary of State in the Trump administration: They contemplated an invasion of us and funded a war against Venezuela by leaning on the subversive faction that has attempted to gain political power through undemocratic means. What a nerve! You will not succeed!” said Padrino Lopez.
Pompeo this week released a memoir titled “Never give an inch,” text in which he details plans and decisions made during the Trump administration to try to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro .
Pompeo devotes an entire chapter to Venezuela, confirming that they, along with former national security adviser John Bolton and former President Trump himself, have proposed invading Venezuela with military troops to bring about Maduro’s ouster.
“President Trump, John Bolton and I have at different times proposed the military option for Venezuela. None of us wanted to speak publicly about this important leverage,” Pompeo said in his memoir.
The former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said they wanted to “make life so miserable for the regime that Maduro and his thugs would have to make a deal with the opposition,” so they chose to ignore the president and an unknown MP like supporting Juan Guaidó.
“We have decided that we cannot recognize Maduro as the legitimate President of Venezuela. Instead, on January 23, we recognized the relatively unknown 35-year-old opposition leader Juan Guaidó, President of the AN, as interim president. We dared,” said the president, a former Trump official.
Pompeo admitted that the US gave $1,000 million to the Guaidó-linked extremist opposition to allegedly bring “humanitarian aid” to Venezuela, money that according to the same sectors of the local opposition simply “disappeared” and from the group of so was stolen – called “interim government”.
The former official also admitted that Washington was putting economic pressure on Venezuelans to try to force Maduro’s departure. He also designed a campaign against him and his government, promoted by “allied artists”.
The US imposed a series of harsh sanctions on the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and seized Venezuelan assets and funds abroad, which it still illegally withholds. The aim, according to Pompeo, was to deprive the Venezuelan government of its ability to earn foreign exchange and prevent it from exporting “its main sources of money: oil and gold.”