Already a subscriber? Make sure to log into your account before viewing this content. You can access your account by hitting the “login” button on the top right corner. Still unable to see the content after signing in? Make sure your card on file is up-to-date.

The US government has agreed to allow Venezuela to pay for Nicolas Maduro’s legal defense.

Some shit you should know before you dig in: If you’re unaware, Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores are facing narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation, and weapons charges in New York. From the moment they arrived in US custody, a fight broke out over who could pay their legal bills. Both the Maduros and the Venezuelan government are under US sanctions, meaning any attorney seeking payment from either of them needs a special license from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Treasury initially granted that license, then revoked it, which prosecutors called an “administrative error” but which Maduro’s attorney Barry Pollack called a deliberate move to kneecap his client’s defense. According to Pollack, yanking the license stripped his client of his Sixth Amendment right to pick his own lawyer, and the Maduros swore under oath that they’re essentially broke. Back at a March Hearing, Judge Alvin Hellerstein argued that a defendant’s right to counsel was “paramount over other rights” (and floated the possibility of throwing the whole case out if Treasury didn’t budge).

What’s going on now: In a notable development, prosecutors and defense attorneys filed a joint letter Friday informing Judge Hellerstein that Treasury has issued amended licenses allowing the Venezuelan government to pay defense counsel (with the condition that the funds come from money available to Venezuela after March 5, 2026, the date the US and Venezuela formally reestablished diplomatic relations).

With the funding dispute resolved, Maduro’s lawyers have withdrawn their motion to dismiss (for now). The two sides also want the Judge to sit them down for a status check in roughly 60 days and freeze the speedy-trial countdown, giving the government room to hand over evidence and defense lawyers time to dig through it.

A trial is still months, if not years, away, and Plenty of legal questions are still hanging in the air. Among them are whether the nighttime raid that pulled Maduro out of Venezuela was even lawful under international rules, and whether a former president can be dragged into a US courtroom over actions he took while running his country.