 [Red State] Former drug cartel kingpin JoaquÃn Guzmán, aka "El Chapo," in on trial in federal court in Brooklyn on a seventeen count indictment that will nearly inevitably in him doing life without parole in the Supermax at Florence, CO.
The charges in the indictment filed against Guzman Loera in the Eastern District of New York will be prosecuted jointly by the U.S. Attorney’s Offices in Brooklyn and Miami and the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section of the Criminal Division.
The indictment alleges that between January 1989 and December 2014, Guzman Loera led a continuing criminal enterprise responsible for importing into the United States and distributing massive amounts of illegal narcotics and conspiring to murder persons who posed a threat to Guzman Loera’s narcotics enterprise.
Guzman Loera is also charged with using firearms in relation to his drug trafficking and money laundering relating to the bulk smuggling from the United States to Mexico of more than $14 billion in cash proceeds from narcotics sales throughout the United States and Canada. As part of this investigation, nearly 200,000 kilograms of cocaine linked to the Sinaloa Cartel have been seized. The indictment seeks forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and illicit profits.
There are lots of "cooperating witnesses" an boodles of physical evidence but the fly in the ointment is that El Chapo has a history of being a customer of Eric Holder’s Justice Department. Under Holder, the only Attorney General to ever be cited for criminal contempt by the Houses of Representatives, El Chapo was allowed to buy a massive amount of firepower from gun stores in the United States using straw-buyers and using gun stores who were cooperating with the federal government under what was known as Operation Fast and Furious. Several of those weapons were recovered from El Chapo’s headquarters when he was arrested. Federal prosecutors don’t want the jury of rubes to hear about it. I say rubes because that is plainly how the federal prosecutors see the jury. |