Venezuela’s Maduro pleads not guilty to drug charges in U.S. court

Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro declares himself “innocent” and a “decent man” as he pleads not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges.

Maduro was making his first appearance in an American courtroom on the narco-terrorism charges the Trump administration used to justify capturing him and bringing him to New York.

The courtroom appearance was Maduro’s first since he and his wife were seized from their home in a stunning middle-of-the-night military operation.

It kicks off the U.S. government’s most consequential prosecution in decades of a foreign head of state.