Just before 6 a.m. ET, five hours before court was scheduled to begin, 30 people were already lining up to get into Nicolas Maduro’s hearing.
Most people identified themselves as journalists. One of them, Jorge Torrealba, was waiting to enter the courtroom to pull Nicolás Maduro over. The previous day, the 35-year-old Venezuelan gathered scrap materials and spent two days assembling a giant statue of the ousted president, dressed in prison uniform and sporting a mustache made from broom hair.
“This is a way to preserve a record of this historic moment,” he told CNN. Some people in line began joking about the statue, which is as tall as the real Maduro. One of them was imitating his voice.
It’s all part of the pageantry surrounding the second trial of the deposed Venezuelan president and his wife, Cilia Flores, facing drug trafficking charges in federal court in New York.
Demonstrators began gathering outside the federal courthouse in the late morning, some carrying placards that read “Free Maduro” and “Stay out of Venezuela.”
There were also altercations between demonstrators and counterprotesters, with some accusing others of not being Venezuelans and of not understanding the struggles of those who endured life under Maduro’s regime.
