The Times reported that the US government did not find any direct link between the president and criminal groups. An official investigation was never opened. “There is no investigation into President López Obrador,” the Justice Ministry said in a statement.
Lopez Obrador responded on Thursday that the accusations were false and not supported by any documents.
The report came at a sensitive moment. López Obrador has been a critical partner to the Biden administration as it tries to slow irregular migration. US officials are also urging Mexico to crack down on the production of deadly fentanyl.
But earlier this month, the Mexican leader nearly canceled a high-level meeting on fentanyl and immigration after other news reports raised questions about alleged drug money in his first presidential campaign in 2006. Lopez Obrador has denied the allegations. The February 6 meeting was held after President Biden called his Mexican counterpart.
But the controversy did not subside. Reports of the failed crackdown in 2006 led to the hashtag #narcopresidente – the drug boss – which exploded on social media. Opponents of López Obrador have seized on the drug allegations as they attempt to oust his party from office in national elections scheduled for June 2. The president's protégé, former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, enjoys a significant lead in the opinion polls.
Lopez Obrador said Thursday that he intends to maintain good relations with Washington, but US agencies will not be allowed to investigate Mexican officials.
“There is cooperation, there must be,” Lopez Obrador said in his daily press conference. “But we will not accept subordination or interference.”
The Mexican leader has had frosty relations with the US Drug Enforcement Administration since he took office in 2018. Lopez Obrador declared the US-backed drug war a failure and announced a policy known as “hugs, not bullets” – relying on social programs to keep people from joining the Drug gangs.
Cooperation with the DEA nearly collapsed after the agency secretly investigated former Mexican Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos on drug charges, leading to his 2020 arrest in Los Angeles. The Trump administration released him amid protests by the Mexican government. However, the DEA's ability to operate has been severely restricted, at a time when Mexico has emerged as the leading exporter of fentanyl to the United States.
The Times cited two accounts of alleged contacts between Lopez Obrador's aides and drug traffickers. In one of these documents, an informant described a meeting with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, before López Obrador won the 2018 election. In the second, another informant said that a co-founder of the Zetas cartel gave $4 million to two of his allies. Trying to get them released from prison.
The report did not identify the president's aides allegedly involved in both cases. The Times reported that it was not clear whether the reports had been independently confirmed.
In a third case, the Times reported, a source told US agents that human trafficking groups had videos of the president's children receiving drug money.
The US ambassador to Mexico for 2019-2021, Christopher Landau, told The Washington Post that he was never informed of any of the allegations. “It raises questions about how seriously this is being taken, or what level of confidence” the DEA has in the information, he said.
A former senior DEA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his current job in the private sector, said he was aware of informant accounts of drug money flowing into Lopez Obrador's campaigns. But to build a case, agents will need permission from a high-level committee examining the potential implications for U.S. foreign policy. He said no such permission had been requested.
“We already knew what the answer would be,” he said.
For decades, drug trafficking groups have infiltrated the Mexican government. One year ago, a US federal court convicted Genaro Garcia Luna, one of the US government's closest partners in the fight against drugs, who was Secretary of Public Security from 2006 to 2012, on charges of accepting bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel.
Critics have often wondered whether López Obrador had adopted a “hugs, not bullets” approach as he cut a deal with drug groups. However, Falco Ernest, a senior Mexico analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the president's policies were actually not much different from those of his predecessor. For example, López Obrador arrested Ovidio Guzman, the son of notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman, and extradited him to the United States to face drug trafficking charges.
He added: “This administration pushes a narrative that is sometimes starkly disconnected from the facts on the ground.”
López Obrador often tries to discredit journalists who write critically about him, and Thursday's press conference was no different. In a mockery of Times reporter Natalie Kitroev's efforts to get comment on the drug story, the president revealed her phone number.
Jean-Albert Hotsen, representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists in Mexico, said the move was unethical in a country with high rates of violence against journalists. “The Mexican press and the foreign press here already have enough security concerns,” he said.
Devlin Barrett in Washington and Lorena Rios in Monterrey, Mexico, contributed to this report.
