From AP:
For months, the U.S. military had been amassing a presence off Venezuela’s coast and conspicuously blowing up alleged drug trafficking boats and killing the occupants. At the same time, U.S. intelligence agencies were carefully studying the country’s authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro, learning minute details such as his eating habits while special forces secretly rehearsed a plan to forcibly remove him. [scroll for more:]
Months of covert planning led to the brazen operation overnight, when President Donald Trump gave an order authorizing Maduro’s capture. The U.S. plunged the South American country’s capital into darkness, infiltrated Maduro’s home and whisked him to the United States, where the Trump administration planned to put him on trial.