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Rich Helppie
Hello. Welcome to The Common Bridge. I am your host, Rich Helppie. It is 2026 and we have the honor and the privilege to begin this new year with a returning guest, the very popular professor from Southern Methodist University’s Law School, professor Anthony Colangelo. Professor, it’s good to see you. How have you been?
Professor Anthony Colangelo
I’ve been pretty well. Classes are starting up soon; excited about that. I’ve got some nice research underway.
Rich Helppie
Well, there are few researchers as good as you and look, it’s a very important time, because right now we’re in a media environment where people just don’t believe the other side. And frankly, I’m in that camp. When I pick up the legacy media - be it online, be it the former print newspapers, be it the legacy networks, be it the cable channels - I kind of know what filter I’m going to get and how they’re going to try to propagandize us. So today, we’re going to talk about the recent assault and capture as it pertains to Venezuela. Is it legal? Is it good policy? Maybe we’ll get on that. Frankly, there’s a lot to be concerned about here. I watched the presser. The President and the secretaries and the head of the joint chiefs, they said, look, we had a successful mission into Venezuela. We captured the President and the First Lady of Venezuela, although people are saying that’s not really the president, that’s really a dictator. Maybe that’s a topic for another day. But also the President said, if you think you’re going to fill that gap, we’ve got a second wave ready to go and then went on to say that we - the administration - are going to be running the country, then somehow vectored over into opening restaurants in Washington DC because of military boots on the ground in Washington, DC. So a lot to unpack there and a lot to unravel. But look, when I go to news sources that celebrated the Russian hoax, that misreported about the law-fare, that turned people out into city parks on Saturday afternoons for performative nonsense, who never investigated where all the BLM money went, it’s like, I’m not going there as a place to get my news or my information. But let’s see if we can talk a little bit about this. Maybe the basic question is, what happened? And is it legal, what the administration did?
Professor Anthony Colangelo
It is, you’re right. It’s unfortunate. It’s unfortunate because the Republicans have a president that I personally have no love for, but in this particular situation, acted completely legally. There is no question in my mind. Under any body of law, whether it’s international or national, the fact of the matter is, he utilized the international law doctrine of rendition, which essentially allows for cross-border seizure where a criminal perpetrates criminal activity that has effects within your territory. This is Supreme Court precedent here, combined with a case called Alvarez-Machain, where the Court actually allowed U.S. operatives to go outside the treaty structure—outside the extradition treaty we had with Mexico. So this is permissible, there is Supreme Court precedent. There’s also an old Latin doctrine called male captus, bene detentus: “bad capture does not deprive a court of good detention or jurisdiction.” The crime at issue is narco-terrorism. There is a narco-terrorism convention, and its jurisdictional provisions in Article Four basically create what I would call a form of treaty-based universal jurisdiction, such that if you have custody over the accused, you have the authority to prosecute.
Rich Helppie
So Maduro was captured and he can’t claim immunity. Also in the op-ed that you’ve authored - that we will be posting as a guest column on The Common Bridge - you talk about the prosecution of Adolf Eichmann, who was head of course, of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. He was prosecuted for crimes against the state of Israel, even though Israel didn’t exist when he committed his crime, and that was, I thought, a fascinating part of history and a part of your legal research.
Professor Anthony Colangelo
I totally agree. These news sources are so unreliable. I tried to get a real conservative take and it was all about, like, Joe Biden making a con. Your president did something good, guys, just acknowledge it, you don’t have to throw petty insults. This is what’s dominating our news outlets now, can we move on and actually get to the real issue, which is, your president took out of power - I would say - a dictator. Probably it doesn’t matter, actually. I mean, if he’s the head of state, he’s the head of state. The question is, is he recognized as a head of state? We can address that in a second when we talk about the immunity issue. But I understand your frustration, I have it too, this is very serious stuff. The way international law works is it’s based on the practice of states. And as I mentioned in my column, there’s a massive data point - massive, massive data point - for how international law evolves. It is an empirical phenomenon, and here you have a massive data point and it’s like, can’t you just accept it as such?
Rich Helppie
I don’t know if it’s good policy because I’m not versed in the law or in international relationships. I know it took a lot of people to begin this process by knocking out drug boats. Of course, there was a knee jerk reaction that these were fishermen. I actually asked a lot of fishermen, how much fentanyl and cocaine do you normally take on a nighttime fishing run? So far, the answer is none. Apparently, it’s just a thing for the Caribbean. But also, during the administration between the two Trump administrations, there was a bounty - a reward - leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Nicolas Maduro; $25 million. It was done at the tail end of the Biden administration, just before Trump was inaugurated. It was bumped up from the $15 million that Trump had set in 2020. I said, okay, there’s $25 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction; who is going to do the arresting and who is going to do the convicting? I don’t understand that at all. What’s the substance behind that?
Professor Anthony Colangelo
The way I conceive of this situation is that it’s become almost emblematic of situations that have popped up, really, since the end of the Cold War. We have these individuals who represent a threat to the stability of the international legal system—some of whom are heads of state, some of whom are terrorists, not heads of state, or pirates—but they have their own little states, like al-Qaeda and ISIS. And the question is how do we hold them accountable? This, I think, is really just basic, first-year criminal law. Essentially, how do we hold them accountable? How do we deter this type of behavior? And even, maybe, how do we rehabilitate them—who knows—but at the very least, how do we address the victims of these crimes, these awful crimes, crimes against humanity. So, Article 2 of the UN Charter says there should be no violation of a state’s territorial sovereignty, but Article 51 says you can act in collective self-defense. Now, what does collective self-defense mean? It means that we are collectively defending humanity, and we all have a role in maintaining this rule. So when Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, or when you have a narco-terrorist dictator in charge, spreading drugs throughout an entire continent, we all have an interest in that—not only states that are directly affected. There are actually two violations. One is the violation against the particular state into which the drugs are shipped. But there is also a violation of the rule against narco-terrorism itself, and that rule is one that every state has an interest in maintaining. The same would go for Putin invading Ukraine. Yes, Ukraine has a claim—its rights were violated—but that’s why I think it is perfectly legal for us to help Ukraine. We have an interest in maintaining the rule that says you cannot invade another country. When people say to me that things have to be proportionate - our response has to be proportionate - I think that’s absolutely wrong. These people are not idiots. They do cost-benefit analyses. They say if we do X and the proportionate response is Y, then we’ll do X. What you need is Y and Z to dissuade them, to deter them. I think, looking back over the last twenty or thirty years—however long—it’s how we’ve handled these individuals, or groups of individuals. People get very technical: did we bring them to trial? What were the criminal charges? Where were they prosecuted? If someone is in the Southern District of New York, they’re going to get all the institutional protections there are, and that is entirely in conformity with international law. The executive absolutely has the power to do this. The executive is essentially the head prosecutor of the United States when it comes to criminal activity.
Rich Helppie
I hope they put him in a more secure place than they put Jeffrey Epstein, also in federal custody at his demise. But also the President went on to make really grandiose statements about taking the oil, we’re going to put our companies in there, and we’re going to run this. I have to admit, what boundaries do we put on saying, let’s take aim at Mexico - which he kind of implied that Mexico, you might be next - this is not a good way to win the hearts and minds, it seems. I know people would make the parallel, that Obama ordered the assassination of Osama bin Laden, but Osama bin Laden was not a recognized head of a state and was widely associated with a criminal enterprise. Also the Obama administration bombed Libya with the express purpose of taking out Qaddafi; as Hillary Clinton said, “We came, we saw, he died,” but, except for Libya, we didn’t take out their heads of state.
Professor Anthony Colangelo
I mean, look—Ronald Reagan bombed Libya and killed hundreds of innocent civilians, including children. Clinton stopped a genocide, probably. I mean, there were at least ten thousand deaths in the former Yugoslavia before he put Wesley Clark in charge of NATO, a multilateral force using smart weaponry so that the degree of civilian death and suffering was minimal compared to what was coming. The independent prosecutor for the ICTY—the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia—Carla Del Ponte, decided, “I’m not even going to pursue an investigation into this.” Now, that may have been partly political, but the fact of the matter is, I read all those reports, and yes, there was some collateral damage. But there were lawyers on the front lines making those decisions. Airstrikes are interesting, right? Obama and Syria, I think the question is just… and even to get back to the Eichmann situation, going and grabbing Eichmann and bringing him to Israel for trial. It’s really a question of how much of the rule of law we are going to follow, with the least amount of collateral damage in the form of loss of human life and suffering. And I think you can actually do a very technical—but not super complicated—spectrum, along which there is full-scale military intervention, precision bombing, and then going and taking the person and bringing them back to stand trial. I would even say—and I think one option that really ought to be considered—is trying people in their absence. I see no reason, in this day and age, why we should not try people in absentia. Other countries do it. It’s a question of notice. They can’t say they didn’t know. The law against these particular types of criminals is very clearly spelled out in multilateral treaties that are ratified by somewhere between 180 and 200 countries around the world, and that practice, in and of itself, generates custom. You can’t say, “I didn’t know torture was illegal.” Have their lawyers go to the courtroom. They can sit in their office or mansion, and their lawyers can defend them, or they can sit next to them. We can do a Zoom trial. Ship the evidence, put it right before the court. I think this is about being as neutrally legal and objective as possible, while also sending a message—a signal—that this type of behavior will no longer be tolerated. If we have to trap you in your own country with an international arrest warrant, and Interpol is waiting at every airport, we’ll do it.
Rich Helppie
The difference here, though, your explanation of what international law is - you’re very learned on this, and I accept that all right - that going in and apprehending Maduro, he did not have any claim to immunity, was legal. But where do the bounds of legality end? Because now we are saying, well, we’re going to occupy the country. We’re going to have a say in who steps into that role, that we are going to take over their oil assets. This seems like it’s going way beyond [the notion that] we’ve stopped a narco-terrorist after we took out their ships. I don’t know if you justify taking out the oil tankers as a means of denying them financing. But at some point, there has to be a boundary. And further, if this was generated from the executive branch, our risk is that a single president could deploy the military without clear boundaries. Now in this case, I’d also point out that the Venezuelans seem to really like the idea that the US military came in, as evidenced by less resistance than the Grenada military put up when we went into Grenada decades ago, and by the celebrations that we’ve seen around the world from Venezuelans, particularly here in Florida. So the question is, was it potentially a popular, good policy? Where are the boundaries of legality and the balance of powers within our Constitution?
Professor Anthony Colangelo
Well, yeah. I think, as far as that goes, our Constitution invests the executive with the power to enforce the law. There’s a historical gloss on that power. Again, this is an article that I co-authored with my constitutional law professor when I was in law school, on the unitary executive. I covered the Truman administration through the George W. Bush administration at the time of the Iraq War. It’s very clear that executives on both sides have been arrogating power. The Constitution gives it to them, but they’ve been pushing it. That creates a precedent, in my view, at least. I think this was legal. I mean, certainly compared with an assassination—not to say that the assassination was wrong, I think, probably, given what Osama bin Laden was, and what potentially could have happened had we taken him into custody and held him to stand trial. With all the people out there willing to blow themselves up to get him out, I think the assassination was probably the right move.
Rich Helppie
I did speak with the first and the second person in the room, bin Laden, and not on the air, but I can tell you this; they said it was a capture or kill mission and they gave him, like, less than a second to surrender, and then they shot him, so it was never going to be a capture.
Professor Anthony Colangelo
I was going to talk briefly - that the immunity is the occupation.
Rich Helppie
Yes, please talk about the immunity and then I want to wrap up with a little teaser about Iran, then we can bring this to a close. Fire away.
Professor Anthony Colangelo
I’ll conclude by explaining why I think this is important in terms of the trajectory of international law, which is really about boundaries. Immunities—very quickly—there are two types. One is status-based immunity. That would be immunity as a head of state. Now, he’s no longer a head of state. He’s not in office anymore, and I think that takes care of that. I also think there are serious questions about the legitimacy of his actual position. And these immunities, in my view, are on their last legs anyway. They only last as long as someone is in charge, which he is not. The other type of immunity lasts after a person leaves office. It’s called conduct-based immunity, and it only covers so-called official governmental acts or functions. Now, the Narcoterrorism Treaty of 1988 (United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances) prohibits this activity, so it does not qualify as an official governmental function. Governments are not officially narco-terrorists under international law. I think we’re also at a point where these immunities have been challenged so much over the last twenty years that they’re almost extinct, in my view. And just quickly, in terms of occupation, I think that’s an exceedingly difficult question, probably one we won’t have time to talk about today. Obviously, the Bush administration could have done a much better job in Iraq. My Iraqi friend tells me they wish the United States had done more. I was at Columbia, and he was married to a Kurdish woman. I wish the United States had done more. If we’re going to go in and remove somebody from power, we have an obligation to create a stable environment for that country, probably handing over control as soon as practically possible. I also often hear people push back against any kind of intervention in another country by saying, it’s all about the oil or it’s all about whatever. That may be partly true, but it doesn’t detract, in my view, from the fact that you are taking a genocidal dictator out of power. I listened very carefully to the address George W. Bush gave to the nation after 9/11, and toward the end he said we are going to remove a genocidal dictator. If the standard for doing so is that your motivation must be pure, or that you must intervene everywhere if you intervene anywhere, then no one is ever going to do anything. That’s an impossible standard to meet. And then you’re left with these strongmen who are killing their own people. So when I say we have to look at what actually happened—yes, there are political motivations—but what did this person actually do? And if the operation was conducted in conformity with the rule of law, it should be applauded. That matters for international law. It becomes a data point, something we can empirically look at and say okay, this worked, we can base future actions on this and move forward, hopefully with motives that are more pure. Because what this does, I think, is create a precedent. It frees states that otherwise would not act to act. I could be wrong—that’s my suspicion. My suspicion is that we have a collection of sovereign states operating in a system that’s trying to achieve stability. That’s what the United Nations was designed to do. It did that through Article 2(4), which says don’t interfere with other countries’ sovereignty. But the real question we have to ask ourselves now is this: when you have gross human rights violations occurring inside a state, is it acceptable to preserve peace and stability at the expense of fundamental human rights? My position is that we can’t tolerate that. We can’t tolerate it. The system will cannibalize itself from the inside out.
Rich Helppie
I appreciate you bringing this to our audience, because I remember the first time we had you on, I was greatly relieved to know that many of these matters of international law had been discussed, codified, settled, and people played within those boundaries. It was not a crisis in that we didn’t know what was going to happen next. As you were explaining that part, I thought, well, it’s too bad that we don’t have a press that brings in someone from the other side of the aisle that says, look, we’re really happy Maduro is gone, we’re meeting with the President this afternoon, and we’re going to be talking about next steps, because we don’t want the next steps to be beyond the boundaries. But instead, it was just so predictable, like, okay, they’re going to bring out the same sorry losers that are going to make the same sorry complaints to the same sorry audience that is bought in to this hook, line, and sinker, versus stepping back and saying, what’s really going on. As I said at the top of the show - and I’ll wrap up with it - we have to be careful that we use the incredible power of the United States within the boundaries of our Constitution and international law, and the president, who serves at the pleasure of the people, needs to stay within those boundaries. I am satisfied with taking out the boats and the arrest of Maduro – great - now the question is, what’s next? When you tell me you’re running a country, taking their oil, and, by the way, restaurants are opening in Washington, and that’s all linked in there some way, I think it’s a really good time for us to be vigilant. I would encourage people to come to real sources like you, Professor Colangelo, and to many of the good writers at Substack and other independent news organizations.
Professor Anthony Colangelo
Frankly, it’s childish, immature, counterproductive, distracting sound bites. It’s taunting. It creates a festering, corrosive political environment in which real progress, if it is made, can’t be appreciated because everybody’s got to throw their insult across the aisle. And it’s sad, because these are opportunities, where - as I said - it could have a really significant ripple effect going forward. But if they’re going to be plagued by taunts and tweets, it’s distracting for any audience. Their personalities come into play, and they don’t need to; we don’t need to.
Rich Helppie
The last State of the Union Address, the President said, I’m not going to appeal to the Democrats, because there’s nothing I can say or do that’s going to make them happy, or words to that effect. That is very dangerous not reaching out to everybody. Prior to Donald Trump being elected again to office, we supposedly had a president that was going to unify us, instead he said his mission was wiping out the Trump movement known as MAGA. That’s not unification when you demonize people like that. The sad part is there are people now so bought in that they can’t get past their own hate and their own brainwashing to step back. Look, I’m not saying they need to become a supporter of one side or the other, but at least recognize that there is middle ground. Professor Colangelo, you’ve been very generous with your time. I’ll give you the final comment and then wrap up.
Professor Anthony Colangelo
I would just say throughout my career, I’ve had mentors, very conservative and very liberal. The ones that were the best – the judge I clerked for in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Winter, a Reagan nominee, and my constitutional law professor in law school, my international law professor in law school, some of the people that I worked with at Columbia and Harvard and Yale - they were curious. This is what I tell my children, actually, that a sign of true intelligence is curiosity. It’s not certainty, I mean, the brain is like any other muscle. When you’re curious and you’re open to different perspectives, your worldview expands in ways that can synthesize other people’s ideas and perspectives and hopefully reach a common ground. If you’ve automatically decided without - as you say - hearing the other side, your mind shuts down and your ideas don’t grow. Then simple little things that could be opportunities for grand compromise don’t even get started. Conversation never even begins. Which is, as I said, it’s just unfortunate.
Rich Helppie
I don’t think truer words have ever been spoken, and that is our mission on The Common Bridge: to get people to talk, to understand it’s not this polarized situation that we’re being presented with by the two established political parties and by the legacy press. I encourage everyone to reach out to people they may not agree with, and to do so with an open mind and a kind heart. With our guest today, Professor Anthony Colangelo - great to have you back on The Common Bridge, sir - this is your host, Rich Helppie, signing off on The Common Bridge.
