Top Venezuelan official challenges Rubio to lie-detector test for drug connections

Venezuela’s No. 2 man, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who is often accused by U.S. officials of being one of the top leaders of the a drug cartel, challenged U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio to a lie-detector contest to see which one of the two has a drug connection.

Rubio, who was tapped this week by President-elect Donald Trump to become secretary of state, has frequently accused Cabello and Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro of turning Venezuela into a narco-trafficking state, at times reminding the public that both men are wanted fugitives of the U.S. justice system, with a combined $25 million reward placed over their heads.

Speaking Wednesday night in his weekly television show, "Con el Mazo Dando" — Hitting with the Club — Cabello insinuated that Rubio is the one linked to drug trafficking.

“‘Narco’ Rubio, take advantage of the fact that you are Secretary of State. Let’s you and I take the polygraph test. I will ask you five questions and you ask me five, and I am going to give you the first question in advance: Have you ever used drugs in your life?” Cabello said. “So let’s face each other. It would be easy… to see which one of us is lying.”

Cabello also posed three other questions for the senator: Have you used drugs in the last six months? Do you have friends who are drug dealers? Have you ever taken irregular payments while holding public office?

The interior minister, often described as Venezuela’s most powerful man after Maduro, said he would reveal the fifth question on his next show.

Efforts to reach Rubio’s office Thursday evening for comment were unsuccessful.

While Cabello did not explain why he was issuing the challenge, previous media reports have disclosed that people close to Rubio have had a history with drugs, though none of the stories have said Rubio himself was involved.

A Univision investigation suggested in 2011 that Rubio’s political prospects could be affected by news that his sister and her husband were caught up in a South Florida drug trafficking raid in the 1980s, when Rubio was a teenager.

The case was mentioned again in 2015 by The Washington Post, in a story that said Rubio’s brother-in-law, who was close to Rubio when the senator was a child, had his career as a cocaine dealer exposed in a major case of Miami’s cocaine-cowboy era.

Cabello’s comments appear to have been triggered by speculation that Rubio’s appointment to the top diplomatic post signals that Washington is about to take a tougher stance on the Venezuelan leadership once Trump takes office.

Rubio, who for years have been saying the Venezuelan regime is criminal in nature, expressed harsh words about Cabello following the July 28 presidential election, which the U.S. and a growing number of nations believe Maduro stole.

“For those new to the issue of #Venezuela let me introduce you to the charming Diosdado Cabello, Minister of Drug Trafficking and Corruption. In partnership with high ranking generals he runs the ‘Cartel de los Soles’. $10 million available to anyone who can help make him a resident of the U.S. federal prison system,” Rubio wrote on his X account on July 29.

Cabello, Maduro, and more than a dozen regime officials have been charged by U.S. prosecutors of running the Soles Cartel, which was created in the early 2000s by late president Hugo Chavez, who wanted to weaponize drug trafficking to hurt the United States, according to the indictments introduced in U.S. courts.

According to U.S. officials, the Soles Cartel exports between 250 and 350 metric tons of cocaine per year, the bulk of which is sent to the United States and Europe.