Trump admin plans to deposit proceeds from Venezuelan oil sales in global banks not the US Treasury!

[summer_in_TX]

Heather Cox Richardson posted a quick note late Wednesday pointing about her full newsletter dated January 7, 2026. Normally she just publishes one bigger article about 2am each day but she added this extra one to call our attention to a specific part of the regular one that was coming out later.

“Today has been bonkers, and tonight's letter will reflect that. But while we are copyediting that letter, I want to call out something in it, toward the end, that I don't want to have overawed by everything else that's happened today. It's this:

"Today, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told an audience at a Goldman Sachs energy industry event in Miami, Florida, that the United States will take control of all oil from Venezuela for the foreseeable future. Lisa Desjardins and Nick Schifrin of PBS Newshour reported this afternoon that Trump administration officials have told lawmakers that they plan to put the money raised from their seizure of Venezuelan oil into bank accounts outside the U.S. Treasury. Desjardins clarified that '[s]ources said they understood these as similar [to] or decidedly "off-shore" accounts.'

Yesterday, Trump announced that, as president of the United States, he would control the money from the sale of Venezuelan oil."

[snip…]

This note is not tonight's letter, which should be forthcoming before midnight (I hope!). But this information— which sure looks like Trump just announced he was planning to take control of Venezuela's oil personally and is planning to stash the cash in off-shore accounts— jumped out at me, and I wanted to make sure people didn't lose it in under the weight of today's other crushing news.”

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Fv9AEPWb7/

The full Heather Cox Richardson January 7, 2026 Letters from an American: https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-7-2026

The PBS Newshour for Jan. 7 is here:

?si=XlWFRAmt2Qw-gJx4
The segment on the proceeds of Venezuelan oil seizures going into private banks rather than the U.S. treasury that HCR refers to can be found at 19:39-20:13.

V-e-r-y sketchy behavior to keep the proceeds from the Venezuelan banks in banks outside of America. We taxpayers paid for the Trump administration's adventurism in Venezuela. Though such proceeds are ill-gotten, shouldn't that money come here? What could possibly be the reason for caching the money in off-shore accounts???

[vapor2]

1. A no brainer, $$$$ for his own fucking pocket

[rampartd]

10. i think you need a few more dollar signs in that post

they are stealing the world.

in no way can this not end in a dystopian dark age.

[Bread and Circuses]

3. We knew this. Stealing billions every chance he gets.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. Dear God. Those on the right who are not stopping him...

are they even human?

[struggle4progress]

5. Global scale theft

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. This plan makes no sense

[Blue_Roses]

7. We're gonna pay for this

shit Trump is doing big time. I think about 9-11 and how that came to fruition from the hate for America. Now we have more of the same hate, but on a scale that is infinite right now. Stephen Miller is such an arrogant ass that he and Trump seem to think they can keep doing these heinous crimes with no accountability. And I do think Stephen Miller is the bug in Trump's ear. The day of reckoning does eventually come around cause karma does exist. I just worry about all the damage and hurt being done In the meantime.

[DFW]

8. Can you blame him?

If you were suddenly to come into a $50 billion windfall that is tax-free, wouldn’t you want to park it somewhere safe?

[Diraven]

9. Because he's keeping the money

Of course. There's no way any of this will benefit the American people.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

11. MaddowBlog-'Slush fund': Democrats push back against Trump's plan to control Venezuelan oil sales

The president said he’d create a pool of money from Venezuelan oil sales. Democrats said that can’t legally happen.

Legal: Congress has what’s known as “the power of the purse.”

Illegal: When Trump says, “I’ve decided to create my own purse.”
www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-01-08T14:45:48.486Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/slush-fund-democrats-push-back-against-trumps-plan-to-control-venezuelan-oil-sales

Late Tuesday, Donald Trump announced his intention to sell Venezuelan oil to create a massive pool of money that he can distribute at his own discretion. On Wednesday morning, the pushback began in earnest. The New York Times reported:

President Trump’s declaration that he would personally control the proceeds from oil produced in Venezuela drew instant condemnation on Wednesday from Democrats in Congress who noted that the president had no constitutional authority for such an undertaking.

‘The president cannot grab Venezuela’s oil for his own slush fund. Period,’ Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the Appropriations Committee, said on Wednesday.

As constitutional debates go, this one’s easy. The sitting American president announced a plan in which Venezuela would “turn over” roughly $3 billion in oil to the United States. The Republican administration would then sell the foreign country’s resources and, according to Trump’s written statement, the resulting money would be “controlled by” him.

In the U.S., the president can’t create his own pile of money that Congress never approved and then start allocating those funds as he pleases. The Appropriations Clause of the Constitution gives lawmakers what’s known as the power of the purse. When Trump effectively responds, “I’m going to have my own purse,” there’s a problem.....

In other words, the American president is seizing control of a foreign country’s resources, selling those resources and generating a pool of money. Now he’s planning to give the foreign country (of which he claims to be in charge) some undetermined amount of the proceeds, to be spent on American products.

It sounds less like a “deal” and more like a “shakedown.”