Kushner Met with Top Drug Cartel-Connected Official on Mexico Trip

Senior White House Advisor Jared Kushner met with Mexico’s top narco cartel-connected official on his recent trip to the nation. The cartel-connected official in question had his campaign partially funded by cartel front companies, had his campaign run by a political party led by a former Los Zetas cartel-linked governor, and fell into controversy when the official deleted a picture from his Instagram where he was seen on a boat with an accused narco-cartel front man.

That drug cartel-connected official, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, met with Kushner as part of a series of talks aimed at improving relations between the two countries, at a time when tensions have escalated over international trade, Mexico’s lack of security conditions and the proposed wall between the two countries. The tensions have also escalated over the ongoing negotiations dealing with the North American Free Trade Agreement.

While most U.S. news outlets have worked to portray Peña Nieto in a positive light due to his refusal to pay for the wall, those same news outlets continue to overlook the Mexican politician’s mounting failures as well as the raging narco-corruption among the country’s political elite.

A series of investigations by independent journalists in Mexico revealed that during his 2012 presidential bid, Enrique Peña Nieto has an influx of money pumped into his campaign by businessmen who have been outed as being operators of the Juarez Cartel. The money was moved through phantom companies and eventually used to purchase cash cards that were handed out in exchange for votes. As Breitbart Texas reported, the scandal became known as Monexgate; despite the significance of such revelations, the case was soon forgotten.

The groundwork for Peña Nieto’s presidential run was largely laid down by former Coahuila State Governor Humberto Moreira who headed the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for a time. Moreira has been implicated in U.S. federal cases as having been a surrogate for Los Zetas during his time as governor of the border state of Coahuila. Various U.S. court documents published by Breitbart Texas revealed that during Moreira’s term, the cartel known as Los Zetas had unlimited power and state protection in Coahuila.

Peña Nieto’s ties to cartels also made headlines in August 2017 when he deleted an Instagram image that depicted him riding a boat with famed narco-musician Julion Alvarez. While the photograph had been taken in the past during a visit to the state of Chiapas, Peña Nieto deleted the photograph shortly after the U.S. Department of Treasury named Alvarez as a front man for a drug cartel that operated out of the Mexican State of Jalisco and froze his assets, Breitbart Texas reported.

Regardless of the evidence showing Mexico’s president’s ties to drug cartels–the very transnational criminal groups responsible for up to 125,000 recent deaths in his country, U.S. media continue to ignore or turn a blind eye to the corruption. U.S. media reports rarely mention the links between such cartels and Peña Nieto nor the raging violence occurring in portions of Mexico.

Brandon Darby is managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon.  You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.