As President Donald Trump suggests that Cuba could soon fall, his administration has begun exploring whether federal prosecutors could charge the Havana regime or the Communist Party with crimes, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The administration is working to develop possible criminal cases tied to issues like drugs or violence, according to the person. The multi-agency effort started recently, the person said.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro had been wanted in the U.S. on narco-terrorism charges for years, but the U.S. military captured Maduro and his wife in January in a raid at a compound in Caracas to face those criminal charges. They have pleaded not guilty and are being held in the U.S.
Even without military action, federal charges against Cuban officials could ratchet up public pressure on the country and could be used as the basis to levy additional economic sanctions imposed by the State Department, which is been consulted as part of the effort, according to the person familiar with the matter. The U.S. already has a commercial, economic, and financial embargo on Cuba that dates back decades.
The Justice Department and State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Cuban officials did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Trump has been talking about Cuba’s government increasingly since after the raid on Maduro, one of Havana’s closest allies. The president suggested following the raid that the island could collapse on its own because its economy was so weak and the oil shipments that it depended on from Venezuela had stopped.
This week, just days after the U.S. attack Iran that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top leadership, the president suggested that Cuba would be the next to fall.
“Cuba is gonna fall pretty soon,”Trump told CNN in a phone interview Friday. “Cuba is gonna fall too. They want to make a deal so badly.”
“They want to make a deal, and so I’m going to put Marco (Rubio) over there, and we’ll see how that works out. We’re really focused on this one right now. We’ve got plenty of time, but Cuba’s ready — after 50 years,” Trump said.
A day earlier, Trump said at the White House that it’s only a “question of time” before American Cubans would be able to return to their home country, as he praised Secretary of State Marco Rubio during an East Room event.
“He’s doing some job, and your next one is going to be, we want to do that special Cuba,” Trump said. He said that Rubio is waiting until the war on Iran is complete.
“We could do them all at the same time, but bad things happen,” Trump said. “If you watch countries over the years, you do them all too fast, bad things happen. We’re not going to let anything bad happen to this country.”
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has long been a Cuba hawk and as a senator for years pushed regime change on the island, as well as in Venezuela.
“Cuba’s status quo is unacceptable,” Rubio said late last month after Cuba said its military killed four Cubans from the United States who were on a boat that entered its territorial waters. “Cuba needs to change. It needs to change, and it doesn’t have to change all at once. It doesn’t have to change from one day to the next. Everyone is mature and real. Everyone is mature and realistic.”
But, Rubio insisted, the island needed to change dramatically, especially to improve quality of life for its people.
