American Thinker: The trial of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is on, and whose name do you suppose comes up, as the witnesses are brought out?
Yup, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the socialist who’s poised to take Mexico’s presidency in a couple weeks. He ran for presidency arguing that he wasn’t corrupt, and well, now there’s this.
Here’s what’s out now from the Los Angeles Times:
One of the most important cooperating witnesses in the prosecution of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman appeared poised to implicate Mexico’s president-elect in corruption on Tuesday while recounting payoffs to high-level politicians — until he was stopped by the judge.
Defense attorney William Purpura led former Guzman deputy Jesus “El Rey” Zambada Garcia through a tightly choreographed dance around allegations about which the court had limited testimony during a lengthy sidebar before jurors were brought in Tuesday morning.
After an extended back-and-forth about bribes that the witness said he paid Mexico’s former top cop, Genaro Garcia Luna, on behalf of his brother, Sinaloa cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, Purpura asked about a man named Regino, whom Zambada Garcia identified as a deputy to then-Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
“And what if any relationship did Regino have to Lopez Obrador?” Purpura asked, before Judge Brian Cogan sustained an objection from federal prosecutors, preventing him from giving an answer. Instead, the defense lawyer pressed the witness over exactly how much money Regino had received at their meeting in 2005.
“I’m not sure, but it was a few million dollars,” Zambada Garcia replied. “It was paid to him because it was said he was going to be the next secretary of security, and if so it would be for our protection.”
O.K., let’s bear in mind that accused drug kingpins who use John Gotti’s lawyer to lead their defense, are probably going to try anything, including having witnesses make wild claims to keep themselves out of the Supermax.
We definitely saw some wild claims from drug lords and their buddies back in Colombia when President Alvaro Uribe was at the helm, claiming he took drug lord money, which was hard to believe based on the fact that Uribe was absolute hell on drug dealers, every one of them.
So don’t think it’s not reasonable to be skeptical.
That said, the story is pretty specific, and it does ring of big-city politics, the kind you might actually see in some place like Mexico City. AMLO at the time was its mayor. Yet he had a pretty good reputation for clean government, and he hired Rudy Giuliani to help fix the crime situation as well. So there might be nothing to it.
It is estimated that 30% of the cash in Mexico is drug money and in one particular border State, Chihuahua it is estimated at 40%.
Three good books:
Dope Inc.
The Underground Empire
Desperados
The international illegal drug trade is about $1-2 trillion a year.
How could the Mexican drug dealers not be protected by corrupt politicians?? Mexico and American governments know the various cartel leader’s names and the exact address of where they live. They know their families and where they live, they know their friends and where they live and they know their top assistants and where they live. They know where the growing fields are. They know where the hard drugs processing labs are. They know the routes they use to get their product to buyers. They know every thing about them.
We only see a drug lord get busted when he has gotten too big for his britches and even then, the government’s know exactly who takes his place. So obvious, that the new lord’s name and sometimes his picture, is plastered all over the news. Like in the Business Section showing new CEOs.
Logic would tell a reasonable person that the business of illegal drugs is the business of governments and the drug lords are simply employees.
Is Michael Avenatti on El Chappo’s defense team?