DID TRUMP TRY TO BRING DOWN A PRESIDENT?
On May 4, while the world’s focus was on the Covid-19 pandemic, a team of US mercenaries landed in Venezuela to launch a revolution. The question is, were they acting alone or...
FORMER special ops soldier Luke Denman appeared weary and dishevelled but unbroken when he was marched in front of state TV cameras on May 5 to deliver his bombshell “confession”. Forty-eight hours earlier, he and fellow ex-green Beret Airan Berry had been captured with 32 others on a disastrous, and farcical, mission to topple and kidnap Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Eight other members of their mercenary task force were shot dead by Maduro’s troops during the failed coup which families of both American men are convinced was backed by thewhite House.
Denman, 34, from Austin, Texas, admitted as much during his forced and heavily edited TV appearance, saying: “I thought I was helping Venezuelans take back control of their country.”
It had been a coup that had gone under the radar, with most of the world, not least the USA, more concerned with the coronavirus crisis.
But difficult questions continue to be asked about the mission, with Denman’s friend Daniel Dochen last week saying the black ops specialist had not told him where he was going but that he was involved “in an effort sanctioned by the US government”.
In his TV statement, Denman said that he and Berry, 41, had been recruited to train a squad of 60 mercenaries in neighbouring Colombia then sneak them into Venezuela’s Macuto Bay by night in a fleet of battered fishing boats.
In what turned out to be a catastrophically conceived plan, Denman said the intention had been to seize control of Simón Bolívar airport in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas before grabbing Maduro and flying him to the United States, where there is a $15million (£12.25m) bounty on his head.
Moments after Denman was led back to his cell – he and Berry have been charged with terrorism, arms trafficking and conspiracy – an exultant Maduro went on state TV to denounce the failed coup and point his finger at thewhite House.
“Donald Trump is behind all of this,” Venezuela’s authoritarian leader boomed while brandishing a document purporting to prove his main rival – Us-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó – was also involved in the plot.
“Here is the contract,” he thundered. “Here are the signatures… a contract for the invasion of Venezuela, a very serious offence.” He claimed Trump had “subcontracted” the raid so he could “wash his hands” if it failed.
He said: “They came to Venezuela thinking the people would greet them like some kind of Rambos, with applause. But the Venezuelan people captured them, tied them up, and the police had to intervene so there were no acts of violence against them.”
His account of how the attempted
coup was foiled by ordinary citizens is wildly at odds with other accounts that suggest Denman and Berry’s mini mercenary army walked into a trap and was ambushed by Venezuelan troops who knew where their boats were landing.
Maduro did, however, appear to have a point when he likened the failed effort to topple him to a “21st-century version of the Bay of Pigs”.
This was the strikingly similar bungled attempt to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro in 1961 backed by both the CIA and President John F Kennedy which proved deeply humiliating for both.
Less than than two days after Maduro’s accusations, President Trump scoffed at the notion that he had prior knowledge of the plan to overthrow Maduro.
He insisted it was “not a very good attack” carried out by a “rogue group” and declared: “I know nothing about it. I think the government has nothing to do with it at all, and I have to find out what happened.”
IN A television interview, he added: “If we ever did anything with Venezuela, it wouldn’t be that way. It would be slightly different. It would be called an invasion. I wouldn’t send a small, little group. No, no, no. It would be called an army.”
Today, however, the Sunday Express can reveal compelling evidence that one of Trump’s most trusted aides, long-time former bodyguard Keith Schiller, had direct and detailed knowledge of the plot.
Schiller followed his boss from the Trump Organization to the White House, where he served until 2017, and now acts as a private consultant to security firms including Floridabased Silvercorp, which has helped provide security at Trump rallies in Texas, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Silvercorp’s boss is Jordan Goudreau, another former special ops Green Beret who has admitted recruiting Denman and Berry and has claimed responsibility for organising the entire operation.
Goudreau says his first brush with Venezuela’s misery came in February last year, when he organised security at a benefit concert staged by Sir Richard Branson in the Colombian border city of Cúcuta.
But his interest intensified the following month when, he claims, Schiller took him to two meetings, in Florida and Washington, with exiled Venezuelan politicians and US businessmen, including Texan billionaire Roen Kraft.
“He was supposed to be the funding,” Goudreau alleged in an interview with the respected Washington Post on May 10. He has since not responded to calls and Mr Kraft has said in a statement that he was not involved in funding any “covert operation.”
A White House spokesman confirmed that Trump’s former personal bodyguard Schiller had attended meetings with Goudreau but insisted he cut off all contact with him in March after they met with Lester Toledo, an aide to Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has indicated that intelligence sources, including the CIA, are fully aware of who did, eventually, fund the operation that went wildly wrong.
He also backed Trump’s denial of prior knowledge, insisting: “If we had been involved, it would have gone differently. As for who bankrolled it, we’re not prepared to share any more information about what we know took place. We’ll unpack that at an appropriate time.”
The families and friends of captured mercenaries Denman and Berry, meanwhile, are urging Pompeo and Trump to “use every weapon in their arsenal” to get both men – who face up to 50 years behind bars – freed.
Denman’s friend Dochen added: “He’s not the sort of guy who would do something that hadn’t been through the proper channels.
“If this wasn’t sanctioned by the government, the only conclusion I can draw is that he was intentionally deceived.
“If that is the case, Goudreau sent his former comrades-in-arms on a suicide mission in service of his ego.”