Page B1From§Eachthe early bird edition — 14 September 2026
THE FILE
“They traded ten Americans and twenty political prisoners to get this guy out of custody, and fourteen months later Venezuela's own people picked him back up for the exact same case. Nobody's told us what all that leverage actually bought — just that the file's finally closed, same as it would've been if they'd left him sitting in Cape Verde in 2020. That's not diplomacy, that's a really expensive round trip.”
“This is a win, plain and simple — six years, two administrations, and we finally got the plea. Sure, we also let him walk in a swap in 2023 that gave Venezuela back twenty of its own people for him, but that was a completely separate negotiation, that's not — did I say "let him walk"? The point is he's pleading guilty now, which was obviously the plan the entire time.”
The receipts
The DOJ disbanded its crypto enforcement team in April 2025 and ordered inconsistent investigations closed - while the president's family runs a crypto business CNBC, 8 April 2025 (Blanche memo)
Nicolás Maduro’s billionare ‘bagman’ ally Alex Saab to plead guilty in federal money laundering caseSaab, 54, was previously charged during the first Trump administration in 2019.
· Venezuelan businessmen Raúl Gorrín and Alex Saab, both allied with de jure president Nicolás Maduro, are arrested in Caracas during a joint operation with U.S. law enforcement agencies on bribery and from the morgue, 4 Feb 2026
· Venezuela releases ten Americans and extradites fugitive Leonard Glenn Francis, while the United States releases Alex Saab, an ally of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, in a prisoner exchange betwe from the morgue, 20 Dec 2023
· Colombian businessman Alex Saab is arrested in Cape Verde a week after Colombian authorities froze his assets following the opening an investigation against him for alleged money laundering. The Nicol from the morgue, 13 Jun 2020
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.