Dispute erupts over who will represent former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in court

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NEW YORK (AP) — Days after Nicolás Maduro’s arraignment on drug trafficking charges, a squabble has erupted over who gets to represent the former Venezuelan president in the high-stakes case.

Defense attorney Barry Pollack, who sat with Maduro in court, accused lawyer Bruce Fein of trying to join the case without authorization. Fein, an associate deputy U.S. attorney general during Ronald Reagan's presidency, said he was asked by a judge on Friday to let Maduro settle the dispute.

Fein told Manhattan federal Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein that “individuals credibly situated” within Maduro’s inner circle or family had sought out Fein’s assistance to help him navigate what the lawyer called the “extraordinary, startling, and viperlike circumstances" of his capture and criminal case.

Fein said in a letter to the judge that he'd had no telephone, video or other direct contact with Maduro, who is being held at a federal jail in Brooklyn. But, Fein wrote, Maduro “had expressed a desire" for his "assistance in this matter.”

The dispute first came to light on Thursday when Pollack asked Hellerstein to rescind his approval for Fein to join Maduro’s legal team. Pollack said that Fein was not Maduro’s lawyer and that he had not authorized Fein to file paperwork telling the judge otherwise.

Pollack was the only lawyer representing Maduro on Monday as the deposed South American leader and his wife, Cilia Flores, pleaded not guilty to charges alleging he worked with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. Two days earlier, U.S. special forces seized Maduro and Flores from their home in Caracas.

In a written declaration to Hellerstein, Pollack said he attempted to contact Fein by telephone and email to ask him on what basis he was seeking to enter his appearance on behalf of Maduro and what authorization he had to do so.

“He has not responded,” Pollack said.

Pollack said he spoke to Maduro by phone on Thursday and confirmed that Maduro "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 said Maduro authorized him to ask Hellerstein to modify the court docket so that it no longer showed Fein as representing Maduro.

Fein, in his response Friday, told the judge he doesn't dispute or question the accuracy of Pollack's assertions. Instead, he suggested that Hellerstein question Maduro in private to “definitively ascertain President Maduro's representation wishes,” including whether he wants to be represented by Pollack, Fein or both.

“Maduro was apprehended under extraordinary, startling, and viperlike circumstances, including deprivation of liberty, custodial restrictions on communications, and immediate immersion in a foreign criminal process in a foreign tongue, fraught with the potential for misunderstandings or miscommunications,” Fein wrote.