Trump DOJ LEAKED Indictment REVEALS NEXT MOVE?!?!

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]The United States is preparing to indict 94y old Raul Castro. That's according to a breaking report from CBS News.

[00:00:08]According to the reporting, quote, "The US is taking steps to indict Raul Castro, the 94year-old former president of Cuba and brother of Fidel, in connection of the with the downing of planes 30 years ago, according to US officials familiar with the matter. The potential indictment, which would need to be approved by a grand jury, is expected to focus on Cuba's deadly 1996 shootown of planes operated by the humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue. End quote. This, of course, follows the indictment and abduction of Venezuelan strong man Nicolas Maduro. Uh this investigation is happening in the Southern District of Florida, the same district where US Attorney Jason Reading Quinones is pushing forward a grand jury investigation for the so-called grand conspiracy against Trump's enemies.

[00:01:05]Today on All Rise News and Legal AF, we're going to go into this report with a frequent guest of this program, uh, well-versed in international law and many of the issues in this case, uh, the professor Jamie Rowan from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

[00:01:25]Jamie, welcome to the show once again.

[00:01:28]>> Thank you. Happy to be here. So, what were your thoughts when you saw the CBS news reporting that it looks like charges against Raul Castro are imminent?

[00:01:38]>> A couple things crossed my mind. We're entering perhaps a new phase of authoritarian law where the executive branch of government is looking at all of the tools at his disposal to enact policies uh that that he wants and using the department of justice which was typically independent more at arms length from the president not used for geopolitical goals has now shifted and now it is becoming an express arm of the executive's foreign policym that's new That's troubling. It worries me about the resources that are going into this compared with crimes that are actually affecting American citizens. The other piece that strikes me as a scholar of international criminal law is that these indictments of extremely old men for actions that were taken decades prior are again very resource intensive. And I'm not sure precisely what their criminal law goals are. Criminal law is typically understood to be for retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, or rehabilitation.

[00:02:46]I see this indictment as about vengeance or in efforts to do regime change, which is not what the goals of criminal law are. So again, I'm seeing a serious misuse of the criminal legal apparatus that we have in this country. And this report emerged right after the collapse of the power grid in Cuba. Can you talk about that situation?

[00:03:09]>> This is absolutely tragic. So this week uh the co the Cuban government announced that they are out of fuel reserves. What does it mean to have no fuel in your country? It means all of your institutions have closed down. There is no school. It is almost impossible to provide medical care. We had Congress people go down to Cuba this past week and report on the skyrocketing infant mortality rates. Cuba was not a great place. I was there many years ago and it was obvious that people highly educated with great access to health care did not have economic opportunity and did not have the kinds of resources that many people in America enjoy. But they did have their health. And what's happening now with these kinds of sanctions on fuel is that people are literally dying.

[00:04:00]Infants are dying. People who need surgeries can't get them. People are having blackouts for 22 hours a day.

[00:04:09]This is not a sustainable situation and it's a humanitarian crisis that the United States has imposed on this country.

[00:04:16]>> Now, another report again from CBS News that broke in the same day. The United States is now offering through the State Department $100 million in aid. What's your reaction to that? That we're getting reporting on the same day that there are plans to indict Raul Castro and this offer to deal with a power grid collapse.

[00:04:38]>> It reminds me of bombing Iran and then offering money to rebuild or bombing anywhere and offering money to rebuild.

[00:04:45]What is actually causing the need for that kind of economic investment? How expensive is it to make up for what the United States is doing to this country through its economic sanctions? It's like taking Russian oil off of the sanctions list because we've created an oil crisis and now we we need to go against actually our interest in punishing Russia. all of these examples of the United States creating the problem and then coming up with some little solution that doesn't address the actual problem and is far too little too late. That number is $10 per Cuban. They need a lot more than that. We need the sanctions lifted. There needs to be clarity on what the Cuban regime needs to do or the United States needs to stop trying to pressure another government to do its bidding.

[00:05:36]>> With the Raul Castro indictment that's said to be coming down, it's about the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue planes shootown. Can you talk about that and the fact that this would be a prosecution about the downing of planes in international waters?

[00:05:53]>> Right. I this is a really interesting case that most Americans don't know about. There was a group of Cubans in Florida that would fly over international waters looking for people fleeing Cuba. In the '9s, this got a lot of attention. There were boats filled with people that were seeking refugee status trying to flee the Cuban island.

[00:06:17]Reminder again, there's not good economic opportunity. There's political oppression and people aren't allowed to leave Cuba. That is the nature of the regime. It is not a free society and we shouldn't celebrate it as such. And what was happening is that people trying to leave were dying and so well-meaning Cubans in South Florida were flying over looking for them and rescuing them.

[00:06:44]Well, that organization was infiltrated by Cuban spies. And those Cuban spies alerted the Cuban government and the national security forces were overseen by Raul Castro and they shot down those planes. Now what happened is that the Cuban government claimed the planes were in Cuban airspace and therefore the Cuban government had the right to shoot them down as a violation of their territorial sovereignty. But the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, which is an independent human rights monitoring body, said that they were actually an international airspace and therefore this is a violation of international law. The irony of course is that the United States is regularly killing people in the Caribbean in international waters. And so the fact that the United States wants to punish a Cuban national for shooting down planes that are overseas that they see as violating their rights and take basically taking the people that they don't want to leave away. Right. But the United States is engaging in in all sort in extrajudicial killings at large. It's not two people we've killed. It's in the hundreds hundreds now. Um in the 150s now is really ironic and we should point that out. And do you think that will be pointed out by the Cuban government if this indictment actually comes forward?

[00:08:06]>> It might. I, you know, again, I don't think that shooting down those planes is a good thing. I don't think it's a good thing that Cubans weren't allowed to leave. I think this is all one gigantic tragedy. But indicting a 94 year old for that activity that happened year 30 years ago when it's unclear what criminal law purpose it serves, I think should certainly be pointed out by the Cuban government. and they could easily say, "Well, then you should be indicting your Department of Defense or war leaders for imposing this kind of extrajudicial killing in in extr territorial waters."

[00:08:38]>> And there's a continuing legal fallout for the US practice of uh shooting down in many cases fishing boats in international waters in the Caribbean, in the Pacific. Can you give folks an update about where that stands? Again, that same organization that tries to look at human rights abuses in Latin America and North America, the Western Hemisphere, the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights is have it has an open investigation into this. There is a case that has been brought forth. It is a case for damages for one of the victims and we have a case that has been filed in domestic courts in the United States as well by the ACLU trying just to get information about those murders. I'm sure the Trump administration will say if this case goes forward that this may be a 30-year-old crime and Rul Castro might be 94 years old right now, but this was a crime. People were killed uh with the downing of these planes and this is justice being done. What's your response to uh that sentiment?

[00:09:44]>> Again, I would argue that we have to look at justice and who it's selectively applied to. And I again it's very difficult to say that justice is being done indicting a 94 year old for shooting down planes that were very close to their territory when the United States is killing fishermen in the Caribbean without any any you know with with impunity. So I think that's my response to that. Again I think that what I would say is that's fine. You can try to point out that the a crime was committed and somebody should be held accountable. In fact, one person was it was a spy um that was indicted and charged for their involvement in the Operation Rescue murders. Justice, many people want justice to be served for those murders. Um should it be Raul Castro? Again, I I don't know if that's the right person to target. And I think most of us are saying that person is being targeted because he's a symbol in Cuba, not because he might is the person most responsible for those murders. And the separate question is will they have the evidence to connect the shooting of those planes to Raul Castro? And like I said a little bit earlier, this investigation is being put forward by US attorney Jason Reading Kinones. and he has been someone who has proven himself to be a Trump loyalist, willing to take actions that look on their face plainly political, papering over uh grand jury subpoenas to Trump's enemies in service of the grand conspiracy investigation.

[00:11:15]Can you talk about that investigation and what that reveals about the way the Southern District of Florida is currently being run? Well, the Southern District of Florida is devoting resources to prosecuting people involved in transnational crime that are from Cuba or some way of in of implicating Cuba in the crime. And so the the goal of that Southern District uh of Florida office is to delegitimize the Cuban regime. So again, what we're seeing is the use of criminal law to weaken a political adversary, not necessarily to enforce the law, not to keep the United States citizens safe. This is what is deeply troubling to me. When you allocate resources in an office towards one thing, you are taking resources from another thing. So we have crime, we have transnational crime, we have horrible impacts of drug trafficking in this country. And instead in Miami, where a lot of drug trafficking occurs, that office is focusing on finding Cuban nationals and Cuban leaders to indict for symbolic purposes for the regime change that the Trump administration is seeking. I find that deeply troubling.

[00:12:27]What this office will do, and I want to see the indictment, is very likely find very vague laws to indict these people under and then try to come up with uh get a grand jury to agree that there's enough evidence that this person can be indicted. And then the question will be, what do we do? Do we kidnap them the same way we kidnapped Maduro? What's going to be the plan after we indict foreign nationals? And if we could even bring them to the United States, will there be enough evidence to actually convict them with a jury? And if there's not, the Department of Justice further loses credibility in the eyes of judges.

[00:13:06]The Department of Justice used to be able to have great success in front of judges who would say that they would first read the Department of Justice briefs to get the accurate story because they trusted the office. Trump is destroying that credibility with his politically motivated prosecutions.

[00:13:23]>> Thank you very much, Professor Rowan, for joining the show.

[00:13:27]>> Thank you, Adam.

[00:13:28]>> And for folks who want to find out more about this and other topics, visit www.allisnews.com or Allrise News on Substack. And to catch the next video, take a moment to subscribe right now to Legal AF.

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