GOP congresswoman demands treason probe of Democrats she says helped Cuba dodge U.S. sanctions

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis wants the FBI, Treasury Department, and Justice Department to investigate Democratic lawmakers and liberal organizations she accuses of helping Cuba circumvent American sanctions, and she is not mincing words about the potential charge: treason.

The New York Republican, whose mother fled Cuba under the Castro regime, laid out her case during a wide-ranging interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast, published May 29. Her sharpest fire landed on Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the Washington state Democrat who Malliotakis says admitted to taking a taxpayer-funded trip to Havana and discussing with foreign governments how to move oil to Cuba around U.S. sanctions and a naval blockade.

No investigation has been announced. But Malliotakis's call comes days after the Trump Justice Department indicted 94-year-old former Cuban president Raul Castro in connection with the fatal shooting down of two American planes in 1996, an indictment that has reset the political conversation around Cuba and the Americans who engage its government.

Malliotakis: 'They need to be investigated for treason'

Malliotakis did not hedge. She told Solomon directly that she believes federal law enforcement should treat Democratic efforts to help Cuba evade sanctions as a matter of national betrayal.

"Look, I personally, think they need to be investigated for treason. I think that they really need to be investigated by Treasury, also by Justice."

She then turned to the broader practice of congressional delegations, official, taxpayer-funded trips, visiting adversary nations. In Malliotakis's telling, these trips are not diplomatic courtesy calls. They are active efforts to undermine the sitting president's foreign policy.

"What we need to do is ensure that none of these congressional delegation trips that are funded by the taxpayers go to actually visit our adversaries and undermine our government."

Malliotakis went further, describing what she says these delegations actually accomplish on the ground. Her language was blunt and personal, rooted, she made clear, in her family's direct experience with the Castro government.

"They go and actually meet with the communist regime at your expense as taxpayers to try to undercut what the president is trying to do. And by the way, it's not just hurting, you know, our government. You're actually hurting the Cuban people. You're actually supporting a regime that starves its people to death, that has made their lives miserable for 67 years, and has killed their family members and have split up their family members."

Jayapal's Cuba trip and oil discussions

At the center of Malliotakis's complaint sits Jayapal's trip to Havana. Malliotakis described Jayapal as having recently taken an official government trip to Cuba and having talked to foreign countries about finding a way to get oil to the island despite American sanctions and a naval blockade. No direct quote from Jayapal was included in the interview, and the specific date of the trip was not disclosed.

But the trip is not without a paper trail. The New York Post reported earlier this month that Jayapal admitted to working with Mexico to move oil into Cuba despite the blockade, a report that tracks with Malliotakis's characterization and gives her accusation a factual anchor.

Jayapal and fellow progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar have previously defended congressional travel to Cuba. After a February 2024 trip to the island, during which they met with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, both lawmakers called for the Biden administration to ease restrictions on Cuba, arguing that engagement served U.S. national interests. Newsmax reported that Omar said at the time, "For us to continue to have, and implement, policies from 60 years ago is not helpful for our country's national interests."

Malliotakis responded to that earlier trip by branding the participants the "Congressional Communist Sympathizing Caucus", a label she has clearly not abandoned.

The question of whether Jayapal's more recent discussions about oil shipments crossed a legal line remains unanswered. Malliotakis wants federal investigators to make that determination. But the gap between a congressional delegation meeting with foreign officials and a lawmaker actively coordinating sanctions evasion with a foreign government is a gap that matters, and one that, if the facts support it, could carry serious legal consequences.

A separate federal probe has already targeted other political figures and activists over Cuba-related travel and potential legal violations, suggesting that law enforcement interest in this space is not purely theoretical.

The Castro indictment and the question of regime change

Malliotakis's interview did not stop at Democratic travel. She used the Trump Justice Department's indictment of Raul Castro, handed down roughly a week before the interview, as a springboard for a broader argument about Cuba's future.

The indictment charges the 94-year-old former president in connection with the 1996 shootdown of two American civilian planes, an attack that killed four people. The specific charges and case details were not laid out in the interview, and no case number was cited. But Malliotakis treated the indictment as a turning point.

"It is time, No. 1, to push for regime change, and I think that this indictment of Raul Castro gives the Cuban government two options: you either leave the island and allow the people to form political parties, to have free and fair elections to allow them to express themselves without fear of going to jail or being beaten or even killed by their government, and or you will see something like what took place in Venezuela for Nicolas Maduro."

That reference to Maduro is significant. Malliotakis pointed to the U.S. military's capture of the Venezuelan strongman in January as a model for what could happen in Cuba. She noted what she described as a visible naval buildup near the island.

"I think a lot of people looking at the situation are thinking that the U.S. armed forces will go in and get Raul Castro, just like they did Nicolas Maduro. You do see ships building up not too far from Cuba's shores, and you know it is number one a national security issue."

No Department of Defense confirmation of a naval buildup near Cuba was cited. Malliotakis framed the observation as something "a lot of people" are thinking, not as a policy announcement. But the implication was unmistakable: the United States has the means and, in her view, the justification to act.

The broader pattern

Malliotakis's demands land in a political environment where the lines between diplomacy, dissent, and active interference with U.S. foreign policy are being tested by progressive lawmakers in ways that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Congressional delegations have long visited allied and adversarial nations alike. But the accusation here is not that Democrats traveled to Cuba. It is that they allegedly used those trips, and separate diplomatic channels, to help a sanctioned, hostile government obtain resources that American policy was specifically designed to deny.

The network of activist organizations that have facilitated engagement with Cuba's government has itself drawn federal scrutiny, raising questions about whether the pipeline between progressive politics and Havana runs deeper than occasional congressional visits.

Fox News reported that Jayapal has defended her Cuba outreach even as it drew conspiracy allegations and death threats, framing her engagement as legitimate congressional activity. Whether federal investigators agree with that characterization, or with Malliotakis's far more severe reading of the facts, remains to be seen.

Malliotakis has not named every Democrat or liberal group she wants investigated. She has not cited the specific statutes she believes were violated. And no federal agency has confirmed that an investigation is underway. Those are real gaps. But the underlying facts she points to, a sitting congresswoman discussing oil shipments to a sanctioned nation around a naval blockade, are not the kind of facts that typically go unexamined forever.

The political dynamics in Congress remain volatile on questions of foreign policy and party loyalty. Even within the Republican caucus, recent votes have shown that party-line discipline is not guaranteed when the stakes involve immigration and foreign affairs. But on Cuba, and on the question of whether American lawmakers should be helping a hostile regime survive American sanctions, the fault line runs straight through the two parties.

What comes next

Several questions remain open. What exactly did Jayapal discuss, and with whom? Which foreign governments were involved in the oil conversations? Has any federal agency begun reviewing the matter? And does the legal definition of treason, one of the most narrowly defined crimes in the Constitution, actually apply to what Malliotakis describes?

Those are questions for investigators and lawyers. But the political question is already settled: a Cuban-American congresswoman with a family history shaped by Castro's regime has put her Democratic colleagues on notice. She wants names, she wants subpoenas, and she wants consequences.

Whether the system delivers any of that will say a great deal, not just about Cuba policy, but about whether Congress still believes its own members are subject to the same laws they write for everyone else.