MIAMI — In the hours after Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was shot to death inside the bedroom of his mountaintop home, an inner circle of people suspected of being involved in the assassination plot in South Florida and in Port-au-Prince were frantically trying to steer events in their favor.

One of them, Antonio “Tony” Intriago, who owned a Doral-based security firm, reached out to Haiti’s police chief, Léon Charles, for cover. In a text message, Intriago wrote that certain Americans needed Charles’ protection after acting under a Haitian judge’s order that led to Moïse’s slaying more than four years ago.

Intriago told Charles that he “must stop any confrontation” between the Haitian national police and a group of former Colombian soldiers suspected of killing the president.

He also offered the head of the Haiti National Police the opportunity to come work with his security firm, along with “international protection” for him and his family.

The outreach by the Venezuelan American accused of hiring the squad of Colombian commandos was part of a flurry of communications that federal prosecutors presented over the past week at the Miami federal trial of Intriago and three other South Florida men accused of conspiring to kidnap or kill Moïse on July 7, 2021.

The four defendants are among 11 individuals charged in the United States. Of those, five pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill Haiti’s president while a sixth pleaded guilty to smuggling ballistic vests into the Caribbean country. As the trial heads into week five, prosecutors introduced their exchanges as part of a vast trove of text messages to show the planning behind the plot and the frantic maneuvering that followed.

The evidence also captures the tensions, shifting alliances, aborted missions — there were at least three — and what prosecutors describe as an effort by the defendants to recast the operation as legitimate while seeking protection and political backing. The defendants’ main argument is that Haitian national police officers and presidential security details had already killed Moïse before the Colombian commandos arrived at his home to assist in his arrest.

The communications were presented through testimony by FBI analyst Kaitlin Dayton, who spent three days on the stand walking jurors through a 900-page summary exhibit compiled from roughly 8,000 gigabytes of data taken from more than 100 electronic devices, including cellphones and a laptop in the United States, Colombia and Haiti.

Among them is a mysterious cell phone that prosecutors say forwarded a photo at 1:58 a.m. on July 7, 2021, of a dead Moïse lying beside his bed, his white shirt stained with blood and thin frame riddled with a dozen bullets.

There are other photos as well, including Intriago in front of the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince and meeting in Haiti with a former senator and a convicted cocaine trafficker who have both pleaded guilty and will testify for the government. Also in the exhibit are voice notes and draft contracts for infrastructure projects that prosecutors say the men hoped to secure from a post-Moïse government. They were shared among defendants, the Colombian commandos accused of carrying out the attack and a broader network of associates — some of whom have never been charged.

For prosecutors, the communications offer a window into the plot’s inner workings and its unraveling as suspects turned on one another while being hunted by Haitian authorities. For defense lawyers, it’s a curated narrative.

“It’s a filtered version of everything that you looked at, correct?” Jonathan Friedman, a lawyer for Haitian American defendant James Solages, asked Dayton. “And the filtered version fits the narrative that the government obviously wants to portray to this jury.”

He then pressed Dayton about whether text messages can be misinterpreted. She said yes, while maintaining that those assembled were “relevant to the investigation.”

Adjusting their story

In addition to Intriago and Solages, the other defendants are Arcángel Pretel Ortiz, who helped recruit the Colombian commandos through his and Intriago’s Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy and Counter Terrorist Unit Security, collectively known as CTU, and Walter Veintemilla, a Broward mortgage broker who prosecutors say helped financed the plot through his Worldwide Capital Lending Group. A fifth defendant, Haiti-born doctor and pastor Christian Emmanuel Sanon, will be tried later due to health issues.

The messages largely echo elements of the plot previously reported by the Miami Herald, including a failed effort to enlist Haitian gangs and a botched plan to kidnap Moïse and put him on an airplane after he returned in mid-June 2021 from an overseas visit to Turkey. But they also show the group splitting up into multiple chat threads as the operation neared July 7, raising questions about whether all were privy to the same plan.

They further suggest that the defendants quickly adjusted their accounts after the killing, a point prosecutors have insisted on while showing discussions about Moïse already being dead when the Colombian commandos stormed his private residence — a claim that has become central to the defense.

Bargain, betrayal and deception

Moïse’s brazen killing plunged Haiti into a power vacuum marked by widespread gang-fueled violence. Even so, the messages show the defendants scrambling in the immediate aftermath to shape the country’s future and their own.

At some point on July 7, Intriago, anxious to save his men and get his choice for Moïse’s replacement quickly sworn into office, asked Pretel for three Haitians’ cell numbers: Joseph Félix Badio, a former anti-corruption government official and confidant of the judge the group wanted to be sworn in as president; Joseph Joël John, a former senator who was poised to become the group’s prime minister; and “Midas,” the codename for convicted cocaine trafficker and businessman Rodolphe “Dodof” Jaar.

Badio shared several numbers with Intriago. One was for Charles, the chief of Haiti’s national police, and the other was for Joseph Lambert, at the time head of the Haitian Senate.

“You are to call Sen. Lambert,” Badio urged Intriago. “And ask him to set an agreement.”

The proposal deal, according to Dayton’s testimony, involved Lambert installing Windelle Coq-Thélot, a judge on Haiti’s high court and close ally of Badio, as president, in exchange for making Lambert prime minister.

The plan never materialized, and the country soon descended into competing claims for power. But Badio’s intervention underscores not just his central role in the scheme, but also how quickly he was willing to betray John and bargain for power.

When an anxious Intriago asked about “the madame judge” — Coq-Thélot — Badio replied in a voice note after forwarding Charles’ number that it was “too early” to put her in.

“Hold on,” Badio wrote on July 7, urging Intriago to remain calm even as he informed him that the Haitian police was ready to launch “an important battle” against them.

“You’ll agree that Joseph Félix Badio … he’s an important person in this investigation, correct?” Marissel Descalzo, a lawyer for Veintemilla, asked Dayton on cross-examination.

“He is present throughout the investigation,” Dayton replied. “From what we found in the phones, he is involved.”

Prosecutor Jason Wu, highlighting some of the call logs, showed that Badio was in touch with multiple defendants on July 7, including participating in a conference call with Intriago and Pretel at 7:41 p.m. He also was in contact with John, dubbed “J3” in the trial.

Last week, before the court recessed for Easter, John briefly took the stand, legs and hands shackled and dressed in a khaki-colored prison uniform. He is among six co-conspirators who agreed to testify for the government after pleading guilty.

Growing tensions

By the time Coq-Thélot emerged as their preferred presidential choice, the alleged conspirators had sidelined Sanon, who had been removed from group chats, according to the threads presented by prosecutors. His role had been reduced to trying to come up with a payment for the former Colombian soldiers’ $48,000 hotel bill.

The chats revealed that Sanon had been unable to secure financing or weapons, described as “tools” in conversation, and he was uncomfortable with the men bringing Haiti’s G9 gang and its notorious leader, Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, into the plot. Equally troubling, Sanon’s U.S. passport and Florida residence made him ineligible to be president under Haiti’s Constitution.

In a heated exchange hours before the attack, Veintemilla expressed frustration with Intriago and Pretel over their lack of due diligence regarding Sanon.

“We need to accept we failed,” Veintemilla said about their banking on Sanon, to whom he had given a $175,000 line of credit through CTU. “No one verified who we were dealing with. In the case of Sanon, we were all at fault.”

After the assassination, the tension intensified as panic set in.

Messages went unanswered and calls were missed. At 4:50 a.m. the morning of the assassination, Solages, 40, unable to reach Pretel on the phone, texted him: “You promised never to turn your back on us.” Then, he demanded that Pretel, an FBI informant, get the State Department on the phone.

“We’re in the middle of a war,” Duberney Capador, one of the leaders of the Colombian commandos, texted when his call went unanswered.

Claims of U.S. ties

In their exchanges, defendants claim to either be in meetings with FBI or State Department officials, or to have contacts. Pretel, who was in touch with his FBI handler on July 7, even shared photos of himself going to the FBI building in Miramar, though prosecutors pointed out it was a Saturday when visitors are not typically received. Intriago, meanwhile, shared a photo of himself in front of the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince while stating he went to deliver a letter to the U.S. ambassador announcing CTU’s presence in Haiti.

Despite defendants’ claims and that a number of them once worked as confidential sources for the U.S. government, prosecutors insist there was no U.S. government involvement in the deadly plot. They counter that the defendants are trying to use those connections to legitimize their criminal activities.

To drive home the point, prosecutors showed an exchange between Badio and Intriago after the killing. Badio urged Intriago to call someone by the name of Jean Robert Jean-Marie, who Badio claimed was a State Department official.

“He is the one for help,” Badio wrote Intriago on the afternoon of July 7.

Records introduced by the government show that Jean-Marie was not employed by the U.S. government. Still, he is among several individuals whose names have surfaced repeatedly during the trial but have not been charged.

Badio, who is tied to several suspects in the case, including John and a Haitian security firm implicated in the coup, has been indicted in Haiti, where he is appealing his charges, Badio has not been charged in the Miami federal case before U.S District Judge Jacqueline Becerra.

Still, his name keeps popping up and being raised by both prosecutors and the defense.

As the operation collapsed, the messages show the men scrambling for protection and escape routes.

“I already sent some kind of help,” Badio wrote at one point. No such assistance was ever sent, Dayton testified, noting that the FBI had reviewed four devices belonging to Badio.

Defense attorneys have suggested that there was deeper involvement in the plot by Charles, who has also been indicted in Haiti, tied to the 18 minutes he took to respond to Moïse’s call for help, and former Haitian prime minister Ariel Henry. They’ve accused Charles of providing the vehicles the defendants used to storm the president’s residence, and Henry of being in touch with Badio after the killing. They’ve also accused the former prime minister of harboring Badio while he was on trying to evade police. Both Henry and Charles have denied the allegations against them.

Wu, one of the prosecutors, asked Dayton if she had seen previous contact between Intriago and Charles before July 7, and she said no. During cross-examination Descalzo also pressed her about Henry and whether she is aware of claims that Badio had close ties to him.

“I have not seen that in the devices,” Dayton said.

Multiple plots to oust Moïse

The text messages point to multiple plans targeting Moïse before he was finally killed.

In coded exchanges, the 53-year-old head of state was referred to as “the thief” and the “rat,” his home as “the rat’s nest” and the presidential palace as “the volcano.”

The messages capture several turning points. At one point, Solages told someone by the name of Jimmy Thompson they had to abort a mission because Moïse had stayed overnight at the palace “working on creating a corrupt new government.”

After the killing, Solages was again in contact with Thompson. Shortly before 5 a.m., Solages texted that the first phase was completed, but they were “in big trouble.” Eight policemen who had accompanied the group abandoned them “when the party got real,” he said.

Solages wrote to Thompson that he was “in very bad danger.” In another conversation, sometime after 8 a.m. on July 7, Thompson asked Solages about the contractors and their roles in what had happened.

Solages, Dayton said, replied, “The contractor did it.”

Solages’ attorney suggested that the message was incomplete because his phone battery was dying. But prosecutor Wu introduced a photo showing Solages speaking on a phone, standing next to a man in camouflage, hours after the exchange and as police were trying to find the president’s killers.

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