When Nicolás Maduro showed up in Manhattan federal court Monday morning — having been hauled by the federal government 2,000 miles from Caracas — he was represented by attorney Barry Pollack.
Pollack, best known for representing WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, with vast experience in both criminal and international law, told the judge in Maduro’s initial appearance that he’d be raising motions objecting to the legality of how United States forces captured the now former Venezuelan president.
On Tuesday, Maduro appeared to add another experienced legal hand to his team: Bruce Fein, a former high-ranking Justice Department official during the Reagan administration, and an expert on civil liberties and international law.
The addition of Fein quickly caused a ruckus that’s been playing out on the court docket.
On Thursday night — after US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who is overseeing the case, approved Fein’s motion to represent Maduro — Pollack wrote that Maduro had never even spoken to Fein. He asked Hellerstein to remove Fein from the case.
“I confirmed with Mr. Maduro that he does not know Mr. Fein and has not communicated with Mr. Fein, much less retained him, authorized him to enter an appearance, or otherwise hold himself out as representing Mr. Maduro,” Pollack wrote in a court document.
Pollack said he had made several attempts to contact Fein to clear up the issue, but never heard back.
In a response on the court docket Friday afternoon, Fein said that he believes he’s rightfully Maduro’s lawyer.
He asked the judge to personally interview Maduro in his courthouse chambers in lower Manhattan and determine who the jailed Venezuelan leader wants on his legal team.
Fein said he hasn’t had any “telephone, video, or other direct contact with President Maduro.”
But, Fein said, people who were “credibly situated within President Maduro’s inner circle or family” had indicated that Maduro wanted Fein to represent him.
The confusion, Fein wrote, may be because Maduro was apprehended “under extraordinary, startling, and viperlike circumstances” and was subject to “a foreign criminal process in a foreign tongue, fraught with the potential for misunderstandings or miscommunications.”
Fein wrote that he doesn’t dispute that Pollack “believes” Maduro didn’t hire him, and that the circumstances require Hellerstein to step in personally.
Fein did not address in his document whether he had spoken to Pollack since Thursday night. Neither Pollack nor Fein responded to Business Insider’s requests for comment.
Federal prosecutors — who have accused Maduro of narco-terrorism, cocaine trafficking conspiracy, and machine gun-related crimes — took no position in the power struggle between Pollack and Fein, Pollack wrote in a court filing.
A third Maduro lawyer, David Wikstrom, made it clear to Hellerstein that he would not be working with Maduro going forward.
Wikstrom was automatically appointed to be Maduro’s public defender after his arrest and capture. He asked Hellerstein this week to appoint him as Maduro’s lawyer — but only so that he could collect legal fees for the several hours of work he performed Monday morning to prepare for Maduro’s arraignment before Pollack formally joined the case.
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