WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Donald Trump announced the audacious capture of Nicolás Maduro to face drug trafficking charges in the U.S., he portrayed the strongman’s vice president and longtime aide as America’s preferred partner to stabilize Venezuela amid a scourge of drugs, corruption and economic mayhem.

Left unspoken was the cloud of suspicion that long surrounded Delcy Rodríguez before she became acting president of the beleaguered nation earlier this month.

In fact, Rodríguez has been on the radar of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for years and in 2022 was even labeled a “priority target,” a designation DEA reserves for suspects believed to have a “significant impact” on the drug trade, according to records obtained by The Associated Press and more than a half dozen current and former U.S. law enforcement officials.

The DEA has amassed a detailed intelligence file on Rodríguez dating to at least 2018, the records show, cataloging her known associates and allegations ranging from drug trafficking to gold smuggling. One confidential informant told the DEA in early 2021 that Rodríguez was using hotels in the Caribbean resort of Isla Margarita “as a front to launder money,” the records show. As recently as last year she was linked to Maduro’s alleged bag man, Alex Saab, whom U.S. authorities arrested in 2020 on money laundering charges.

The U.S. government has never publicly accused Rodríguez of any criminal wrongdoing. Notably for Maduro’s inner circle, she’s not among the more than a dozen current Venezuelan officials charged with drug trafficking alongside the ousted president.

Rodríguez’s name has surfaced in nearly a dozen DEA investigations, several of which remain ongoing, involving agents in field offices from Paraguay and Ecuador to Phoenix and New York, the AP learned. The AP could not determine the specific focus of each investigation.

Three current and former DEA agents who reviewed the records at the request of AP said they indicate an intense interest in Rodríguez throughout much of her tenure as vice president, which began in 2018. They were not authorized to discuss DEA investigations and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The records reviewed by AP do not make clear why Rodríguez was elevated to a “priority target,” a designation that requires extensive documentation to justify additional investigative resources. The agency has hundreds of priority targets at any given moment, and having the label does not necessarily lead to being charged criminally.

“She was on the rise, so it’s not surprising that she might become a high-priority target with her role,” said Kurt Lunkenheimer, a former federal prosecutor in Miami who has handled multiple cases related to Venezuela. “The issue is when people talk about you and you become a high-priority target, there’s a difference between that and evidence supporting an indictment.”

Venezuela’s Communications Ministry did not respond to emails seeking comment.

The DEA and U.S. Justice Department also did not respond to requests for comment. Asked whether the president trusts Rodríguez, the White House referred AP to Trump’s earlier remarks on a “very good talk” he had with the acting president Wednesday, one day before she met in Caracas with CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

Almost immediately after Maduro’s capture, Trump started heaping praise on Rodríguez — this past week referring to her as a “terrific person — in close contact with officials in Washington, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The DEA’s interest in Rodríguez comes even as Trump has sought to install her as the steward of American interests to navigate a volatile post-Maduro Venezuela, said Steve Dudley, co-director of InSight Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime in the Americas.

“The current Venezuela government is a criminal-hybrid regime. The only way you reach a position of power in the regime is by, at the very least, abetting criminal activities,” said Dudley, who has investigated Venezuela for years. “This isn’t a bug in the system. This is the system.”

Those sentiments were echoed by opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who met with Trump at the White House Thursday in a bid to push for more U.S. support for Venezuelan democracy.

“The American justice system has sufficient information about her,” said Machado, referring to Rodríguez. “Her profile is quite clear.”

Rodríguez, 56, worked her way to the apex of power in Venezuela as a loyal aide to Maduro, with whom she shares a deep-seated leftist bent stemming from her socialist father’s death in police custody when she was only 7 years old. Despite blaming the U.S. for her father’s death, she steadily worked while foreign minister and later vice president to court American investment during the first Trump administration, hiring lobbyists close to Trump and even ordering the state oil company to make a $500,000 donation to his inaugural committee.

The charm offensive flopped when Trump, urged on by Rubio, pressured Maduro to hold free and fair elections. In September 2018,the White House sanctioned Rodríguez, describing her as key to Maduro’s grip on power and ability to “solidify his authoritarian rule.” She was also sanctioned earlier by the European Union.

But those allegations focused on her threat to Venezuela’s democracy, not any alleged involvement in corruption.

“Venezuela is a failed state that supports terrorism, corruption, human rights abuses and drug trafficking at the highest echelons. There is nothing political about this analysis,” said Rob Zachariasiewicz, a longtime former DEA agent who led investigations into top Venezuelan officials and is now a managing partner at Elicius Intelligence, a specialist investigations firm. “Delcy Rodríguez has been part of this criminal enterprise.”

The DEA records seen by AP provide an unprecedented glimpse into the agency’s interest in Rodríguez. Much of it was driven by the agency’s elite Special Operations Division, the same Virginia-based unit that worked with prosecutors in Manhattan to indict Maduro.

One of the records cites an unnamed confidential informant linking Rodríguez to hotels in Margarita Island that are allegedly used as a front to launder money. The AP has been unable to independently confirm the information.

The U.S. has long considered the resort island, northeast of the Venezuelan mainland, a strategic hub for drug trafficking routes to the Caribbean and Europe. Numerous traffickers have been arrested or taken haven there over the years, including representatives of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel.

The records also indicate the feds were looking at Rodríguez’s involvement in government contracts awarded to Maduro’s ally Saab — investigations that remain ongoing even after President Joe Biden pardoned him in 2023 as part of a prisoner swap for Americans imprisoned in Venezuela.

The Colombian businessman rose to become one of Venezuela’s top fixers as U.S. sanctions cut off its access to hard currency and Western banks. He was arrested in 2020 on federal charges of money laundering while traveling from Venezuela to Iran to negotiate oil deals helping both countries circumvent sanctions.

The DEA records also indicate agents’ interest in Rodríguez’s possible involvement in allegedly corrupt deals between the government and Omar Nassif-Sruji, the brother of her longtime romantic partner, Yussef Nassif. Nassif-Sruji and Nassif did not respond to emails and text messages seeking comment.

Companies registered by the two brothers in Hong Kong received more than $650 million in Venezuelan government contracts between 2017 and 2019 to import food and dialysis medicine, according to copies of the contracts obtained in 2021 by Venezuelan investigative journalism outlet Armando.info.

Taken together, the DEA investigations underscore how power has long been exercised in Venezuela, which is ranked as the world’s third most corrupt country by Transparency International. For Rodríguez, they also represent something of a razor-sharp sword over her head, breathing life to Trump’s threat soon after Maduro’s ouster that she would “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro” if she didn’t fall in line. The president added that he wanted her to provide the U.S. “total access” to the country’s vast oil reserves and other natural resources.

“Just being a leader in a highly corrupted regime for over a decade makes it logical that she is a priority target for investigation,” said David Smilde, a Tulane University professor who has studied Venezuela for three decades. “She surely knows this, and it gives the U.S. government leverage over her. She may fear that if she does not do as the Trump administration demands, she could end up with an indictment like Maduro.”

Mustian reported from New York.

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.

This story is part of an ongoing collaboration between The Associated Press and FRONTLINE (PBS) that includes an upcoming documentary.

MIAMI (AP) — In 2017, as political outsider Donald Trump headed to Washington, Delcy Rodríguez spotted an opening.

Then Venezuela’s foreign minister, Rodríguez directed Citgo — a subsidiary of the state oil company — to make a $500,000 donation to the president’s inauguration. With the socialist administration of Nicolas Maduro struggling to feed Venezuela, Rodríguez gambled on a deal that would have opened the door to American investment. Around the same time, she saw that Trump’s ex-campaign manager was hired as a lobbyist for Citgo, courted Republicans in Congress and tried to secure a meeting with the head of Exxon.

The charm offensive flopped. Within weeks of taking office, Trump, urged by then-Sen. Marco Rubio, made restoring Venezuela’s democracy his driving focus in response to Maduro’s crackdown on opponents. But the outreach did bear fruit for Rodríguez, making her a prominent face in U.S. business and political circles and paving the way for her own rise.

“She’s an ideologue, but a practical one,” said Lee McClenny, a retired foreign service officer who was the top U.S. diplomat in Caracas during the period of Rodríguez’s outreach. “She knew that Venezuela needed to find a way to resuscitate a moribund oil economy and seemed willing to work with the Trump administration to do that.”

Nearly a decade later, as Venezuela’s interim president, Rodríguez’s message — that Venezuela is open for business — seems to have persuaded Trump. In the days since Maduro’s stunning capture Saturday, he’s alternately praised Rodríguez as a “gracious” American partner while threatening a similar fate as her former boss if she doesn’t keep the ruling party in check and provide the U.S. with “total access” to the country’s vast oil reserves. One thing neither has mentioned is elections, something the constitution mandates must take place within 30 days of the presidency being permanently vacated.

This account of Rodríguez’s political rise is drawn from interviews with 10 former U.S. and Venezuelan officials as well as businessmen from both countries who’ve had extensive dealings with Rodríguez and in some cases have known her since childhood. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from someone who they almost universally described as bookishly smart, sometimes charming but above all a cutthroat operator who doesn’t tolerate dissent. Rodríguez didn’t respond to AP requests for an interview.

Rodríguez entered the leftist movement started by Hugo Chávez late — and on the coattails of her older brother, Jorge Rodríguez, who as head of the National Assembly swore her in as interim president Monday.

Tragedy during their childhood fed a hardened leftist outlook that would stick with the siblings throughout their lives. In 1976 — when, amid the Cold War, U.S. oil companies, American political spin doctors and Pentagon advisers exerted great influence in Venezuela — a little-known urban guerrilla group kidnapped a Midwestern businessman. Rodriguez’s father, a socialist leader, was picked up for questioning and died in custody.

McClenny remembers Rodríguez bringing up the murder in their meetings and bitterly blaming the U.S. for being left fatherless at the age of 7. The crime would radicalize another leftist of the era: Maduro.

Years later, while Jorge Rodríguez was a top electoral official under Chávez, he secured for his sister a position in the president’s office.

But she advanced slowly at first and clashed with colleagues who viewed her as a haughty know-it-all.

In 2006, on a whirlwind international tour, Chávez booted her from the presidential plane and ordered her to fly home from Moscow on her own, according to two former officials who were on the trip. Chávez was upset because the delegation’s schedule of meetings had fallen apart and that triggered a feud with Rodriguez, who was responsible for the agenda.

“It was painful to watch how Chávez talked about her,” said one of the former officials. “He would never say a bad thing about women but the whole flight home he kept saying she was conceited, arrogant, incompetent.”

Days later, she was fired and never occupied another high-profile role with Chávez.

Years later, in 2013, Maduro revived Rodríguez’s career after Chávez died of cancer and he took over.

A lawyer educated in Britain and France, Rodríguez speaks English and spent large amounts of time in the United States. That gave her an edge in the internal power struggles among Chavismo — the movement started by Chávez, whose many factions include democratic socialists, military hardliners who Chávez led in a 1992 coup attempt and corrupt actors, some with ties to drug trafficking.

Her more worldly outlook, and refined tastes, also made Rodríguez a favorite of the so-called “boligarchs” — a new elite that made fortunes during Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution. One of those insiders, media tycoon Raul Gorrín, worked hand-in-glove with Rodríguez’s back-channel efforts to mend relations with the first Trump administration and helped organize a secret visit by Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, to Caracas in April 2018 for a meeting with Maduro. A few months later, U.S. federal prosecutors unsealed the first of two money laundering indictments against Gorrin.

After Maduro promoted Rodríguez to vice president in 2018, she gained control over large swaths of Venezuela’s oil economy. To help manage the petro-state, she brought in foreign advisers with experience in global markets. Among them were two former finance ministers in Ecuador who helped run a dollarized, export-driven economy under fellow leftist Rafael Correa. Another key associate is French lawyer David Syed, who for years has been trying to renegotiate Venezuela’s foreign debt in the face of crippling U.S. sanctions that make it impossible for Wall Street investors to get repaid.

“She sacrificed her personal life for her political career,” said one former friend.

As she amassed more power, she crushed internal rivals. Among them: once powerful Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami, who was jailed in 2024 as part of an anti-corruption crackdown spearheaded by Rodríguez.

In her de-facto role as Venezuela’s chief operating officer, Rodríguez proved a more flexible, trustworthy partner than Maduro. Some have likened her to a sort of Venezuelan Deng Xiaoping — the architect of modern China.

Hans Humes, chief executive of Greylock Capital Management, said that experience will serve her well as she tries to jump-start the economy, unite Chavismo and shield Venezuela from stricter terms dictated by Trump. Imposing an opposition-led government right now, he said, could trigger bloodshed of the sort that ripped apart Iraq after U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein and formed a provisional government including many leaders who had been exiled for years.

“We’ve seen how expats who have been outside of the country for too long think things should be the way it was before they left,” said Humes, who has met with Maduro as well as Rodríguez on several occasions. “You need people who know how to work with how things are not how they were.”

Where Rodríguez’s more pragmatic leadership style leaves Venezuela’s democracy is uncertain.

Trump, in remarks after Maduro’s capture, said Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado lacks the “respect” to govern Venezuela despite her handpicked candidate winning what the U.S. and other governments consider a landslide victory in 2024 presidential elections stolen by Maduro.

Elliott Abrams, who served as special envoy to Venezuela during the first Trump administration, said it is impossible for the president to fulfill his goal of banishing criminal gangs, drug traffickers and Middle Eastern terrorists from the Western Hemisphere with the various factions of Chavismo sharing power.

“Nothing that Trump has said suggests his administration is contemplating a quick transition away from Delcy. No one is talking about elections,” said Abrams. “If they think Delcy is running things, they are completely wrong.”