The recent guilty plea of Ovidio Guzmán López, son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has reignited the controversy over the alleged ties between former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and drug trafficking.
Although AMLO himself at the time flatly denied having received money from drug traffickers, new revelations claim that the former Mexican president is indeed being investigated by US authorities.
In a column published by journalist Raymundo Riva Palacio in El Financiero, it is stated that López Obrador faces at least two open investigations in Brooklyn and another indirect one in Langley, headquarters of the CIA.
This information has increased pressure on President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has engaged in a constant defense of her predecessor, creating a serious political and diplomatic problem for her nascent government.
US Investigations Reportedly Target AMLO
According to Raymundo Riva Palacio, López Obrador is not only under surveillance by US agencies such as the FBI and the DEA, but there are already two open cases against him in New York related to alleged ties to organized crime.
According to the columnist, this situation explains Claudia Sheinbaum’s intense concern about the Ovidio Guzmán case, considering the potential damage that an indictment against her mentor could cause to her administration.
Riva Palacio asserts that the case against López Obrador is being taken seriously in Washington and mentions that even members of Donald Trump’s inner circle—such as Susie Wiles, Marco Rubio, and Pam Bondi—view the former Mexican president with suspicion.
He also maintains that AMLO’s name has come up in internal discussions among key US government agencies, suggesting an institutional interest in clarifying his possible ties to cartels.
Sheinbaum, Caught Between Defense and Political Exhaustion
Current President Claudia Sheinbaum has found herself at the center of the storm after publicly criticizing the United States for not informing her government about the plea deal reached by Ovidio Guzmán.
Sheinbaum’s statements drew a harsh response from the drug trafficker’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, who accused her of acting as a “publicist for organized crime.”
Riva Palacio details that Sheinbaum experienced a “political and communications shipwreck” when she tried to confront this crisis alone. She points out that key officials such as the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and the head of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) did not support her in a timely manner, and that her insistence on defending López Obrador ended up placing her in a vulnerable position.
According to the columnist, Sheinbaum is using her political capital to protect the founder of Morena.
The Cienfuegos Case as a Background to the Disagreement
One of the main arguments Ovidio Guzmán’s lawyer has used to justify Mexico’s absence from the negotiations is the criminal record of General Salvador Cienfuegos.
Jeffrey Lichtman recalled that Cienfuegos was detained in the US for alleged ties to drug trafficking, but was released at the request of the AMLO administration, which exonerated him shortly afterward in Mexico.
This precedent, widely questioned at the time, returned to public discussion as an example of the alleged impunity that has benefited individuals linked to drug trafficking.
The lawyer even went so far as to suggest that the Mexican government lacks the legitimacy to intervene in judicial agreements with criminals they themselves released.
What is known about the preliminary investigations against AMLO
Various journalistic investigations have documented that US agencies, such as the DEA and the Department of Justice, had been gathering information for more than a decade about alleged ties between drug trafficking operators and people close to López Obrador.
In 2024, The New York Times, ProPublica, and The Spectator revealed details of investigations that pointed to 2006 campaign donations and meetings with members of the Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas.
Although many of these investigations were closed without charges being filed against the then president, internal documents and statements from informants revealed payments, meetings, and even videos involving people close to AMLO and even his children.
At the time, López Obrador described these reports as “slander” and attributed them to a destabilization campaign from the United States.
Fear in the 4T’s Inner Circle
For Riva Palacio, Sheinbaum’s true fear lies not in her own ties to organized crime, of which—he says—there is no evidence in the United States, but in the consequences of a possible accusation against López Obrador.
The columnist argues that a formal accusation would not only undermine the former president’s image but could seriously affect the governability of the so-called Fourth Transformation.
For now, neither the United States nor the Mexican governments have officially confirmed new active investigations against AMLO.
However, the judicial context surrounding Ovidio Guzmán and the accusations in Washington reinforce the idea that the issue remains alive in American power circles. And while Sheinbaum tries to contain the crisis, the accusations could continue to escalate.
Source: politico
