Todd Blanche insists Maduro's arrest and extraction was legal

The deputy attorney general argued the Trump administration didn't violate any laws when it arrested and removed the Venezuelan leader and his wife Cilia Flores.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Monday shrugged off concerns about the legality of the arrests of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, saying the Trump administration "did everything within the law."

The U.S. didn't do "anything that violates international law," Blanche said on NBC News NOW's "Top Story with Tom Llamas" when he was asked whether the military attack and the subsequent arrests violated the United Nations charter, as some foreign governments have alleged.

"Absolutely, positively not," Blanche said.

"The United States has an absolute legal right to go and arrest people charged with horrible crimes," he said, later adding that "what we did was not only right and not only legal, but it’s what the American people expect us to do when we file charges against individuals like him."

Maduro faces a narco-terrorism conspiracy charge. He and his wife, Cilia Flores, were both charged with cocaine importation conspiracy and weapons offenses. They pleaded not guilty at a court hearing in New York earlier Monday.