Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum went to court to respond to allegations made by the lawyer for two of the sons of convicted former drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
After an exchange of statements with attorney Jeffrey Lichtman, who accused her of acting as a “public relations arm” for one of the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, Sheinbaum announced on Tuesday that the government’s Legal Counsel “filed the lawsuit,” but offered no details.
The announcement follows Lichtman’s statements last week against the Mexican government for its handling of the case of former Secretary of Defense General Salvador Cienfuegos, who was temporarily detained in the United States in 2020 on charges of participating in a drug trafficking network.
“This whole issue needs to be clarified because it’s very clear there was innocence,” Sheinbaum said on Monday, urging the Attorney General’s Office to rule on the case against Cienfuegos, who was arrested in October 2020 by US authorities. The charges were later dropped and he was sent to Mexico, where he was released.
Lichtman represents two of “El Chapo’s” sons, Ovidio and Joaquín Guzmán López, who are imprisoned in the United States. The former, who was arrested in Mexico and extradited to the United States in 2023, pleaded guilty last week to drug trafficking charges in a Chicago court.
The lawyer directly accused Sheinbaum of acting as “the public relations arm” of the organization of the historic drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who was arrested in July 2024 in Texas along with Joaquín Guzmán López. Two months after those arrests, a bloody confrontation erupted in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, leaving hundreds dead over the past ten months.
“El Chapo” Guzmán is serving a life sentence in the United States after being convicted in 2019 for his role as the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, having trafficked mountains of cocaine and other drugs to the United States for 25 years. The brothers allegedly assumed their father’s former role as leaders of the Sinaloa cartel.
Source: latimes
