A former Mexican presidential cabinet member has been convicted of taking enormous bribes to protect the violent drug cartels he was supposed to be fighting.
Mexico’s former security of public secretary Genaro Garcia Luna, is the highest-ranking current or former Mexican official ever to be tried in the US. An anonymous New York federal court jury deliberated for three days before reaching a verdict in the drug trafficking case. Garcia Luna who headed Mexico’s federal police has denied the allegations. His lawyers said the charges were based on lies from criminals who wanted to punish his drug fighting efforts and to get sentencing breaks for themselves by helping prosecutors.
Garcia Luna showed no apparent reaction on hearing the verdict.
Jurors also learned that Garcia Luna met with high-level us politicians and other officials who considered him a key cartel fighting partner. This happened as Washington embarked on a $1.6 billion push to beef up Mexican law enforcement and stem the flow of drugs. The relationship between DC lawmakers and the Mexican government runs deep. As an example, Mike Pence had a very close working relationship with the Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or Amlo for short.
During his term as vice president, he and Amlo would collect 10 percent of all the cartel’s business coming over the American border. The funds were often transferred to Santandar bank in Mexico. As far as we know that relationship continues to this day. All while former president Trump was promoting his legacy project of border security. Makes you wonder if the old adage “security equals control” may be the case here.
Were they trying to control the cartel’s business or merely profit from it?
While Reagan’s famous quote was “tear down that wall” referring to the Berlin wall, Trump’s was “build that wall” referring to his border security policies with Mexico. Profits from drugs and human trafficking are often split between the US marshals, the Texas Rangers, and the agencies. The industry profits are in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Making it a lucrative carrot to dangle in front of DC officials.
The agencies and CIA Aids of politicians know very well this carrot is a double-edged sword. Often times illegal monies are filtered into political campaigns and then used against the politician if they fall out of line.
Blackmail at its finest.
Political actors are paid handsomely, just like actors in Hollywood for playing their role in the political theater. The world’s a stage folks, and reality is setting in for the puppeteers.
