US Accuses Venezuela of Election Manipulation After Maduro Victory, Threatens Sanctions

US officials on Monday accused Venezuela of election manipulation and suggested more sanctions could be imposed on the country after President Nicolas Maduro secured a third six-year presidential term.

Venezuela’s election authority said Maduro won 51% of the vote while the leading opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, received 44%. The opposition is disputing the results, claiming that Gonzalez really won by a wide margin.

Two US officials speaking to reporters called on the election authority to release a detailed breakdown of the vote.

“I think what we would like to see happen next is have the National Electoral Council publish the detailed precinct-level results to see if they do in fact have the receipts that can both verify and justify the electoral results that they announced last night,” one of the officials said.

The officials did not announce any new sanctions but said more could come. “We are faced with potentially a new scenario,” one official said. “We are going to take that into account as we map forward where we may head with respect to sanctions toward Venezuela.”

The US rejected the results of Venezuela’s 2018 election and recognized opposition figure Juan Guaido as the “interim president” in 2019 despite Maduro being in power in Caracas. The Trump administration launched a regime change effort against Maduro that involved a failed coup and a ratcheting up of sanctions to a level that amounted to an economic embargo on Venezuela.

John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, recently acknowledged that the administration knew its sanctions campaign would cause suffering in Venezuela and contribute to migration out of the country.

“There was no doubt the sanctions, along with the general economic deterioration before we imposed them, was driving a lot of people out of the country,” Bolton said. “That, to me, was a way to put pressure on the country.”

The Biden administration recently started engaging with the Maduro government and eased some sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry, but some have already been re-imposed.

In the wake of Sunday’s elections, some members of Congress are calling for regime change in Venezuela and a repeat of the policies that failed to unseat Maduro. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) sent a letter to President Biden urging him to recognize Gonzalez as the president-elect.