MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has denied allegations contained in a U.S. media report Thursday about a U.S. investigation into allegations that people close to him took money from drug traffickers shortly before his 2018 election and again after becoming president.
The New York Times story cited unnamed U.S. officials familiar with the now-shelved investigation and noted that a formal investigation had not been opened, and it was not known how many of the whistleblowers' allegations were independently corroborated. It is the second time in recent weeks that the foreign press has published stories indicating that the US government has looked into alleged contacts between Lopez Obrador allies and drug cartels.
"This is a complete lie," López Obrador said during his morning press briefing, criticizing the Times and reading aloud the reporter's phone number, a move that sparked an investigation by Mexican government watchdogs.
"The US government has to deal with this," he said. Later Thursday, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, "There is no investigation into President López Obrador."
In late January, ProPublica, Deutsche Welle and InsightCrime published stories describing an earlier US investigation into whether López Obrador's campaign aides took money from drug traffickers during an unsuccessful bid for president in 2006.
In that instance, López Obrador laid the blame savagely at the feet of the US government and wondered aloud why he should continue to negotiate issues like immigration with a government that is trying to harm him.
López Obrador is in the final months of his presidency, but his pledge Claudia Sheinbaum is leading the polls to replace him in the June 2 election.
The president has faced criticism for not going after drug cartels as aggressively as his predecessors. He campaigned on a "bullets, not hugs" approach to addressing the social ills that contributed to the cartels' ranks.
Last week, Roman Catholic bishops confirmed they had tried to broker a peace deal between rival cartels to spare communities wracked by violence in the southern state of Guerrero.
The President said he had approved such talks.
According to the Times, an investigation into Lopez Obrador's 2018 campaign was closed after a U.S. investigation into Mexico's former defense secretary sparked a diplomatic row. The United States eventually dropped drug-trafficking charges against former Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos and returned him to Mexico where he was immediately cleared and released.
López Obrador publicly attacked the Drug Enforcement Administration at the time, undermining cooperation between the two governments.
Mike Vigil, the DEA's former chief of international operations, feared that the latest dispute could damage US-Mexico cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking, similar to earlier rounds of stories about the US investigation published by various media outlets in late January. .
"It's apparently based on informants, no evidence," Vigil said of the Times report. "You have to be really careful about the accusations you make."
He noted that traffickers have tried in the past to taint politicians with campaign contributions that the candidate may have known nothing about.
But on Thursday, the president took more aim at his anger at the Times. López Obrador is a fierce critic of Mexico's press, attacking coverage of his administration almost daily.
The president appeared on a big screen and a letter from the Times' Mexico correspondent — including his phone number — picked up on the story and requested comment.
The New York Times X, in a statement previously posted on Twitter, said, "This is a disturbing and unacceptable tactic from a world leader at a time when threats against journalists are on the rise." We have published the results of this investigation. And stand by our reporting and journalists who follow the truth where it leads."
The Mexican government's autonomous public information agency, which also has the domain of personal information protection, said in a statement later Thursday that it would open an investigation into the dissemination of the Times reporter's phone number to Lopez Obrador. It said it was awaiting a formal complaint.
The agency, known by its Spanish acronym INAI, has been on the receiving end of attacks on the president himself. López Obrador, who has been repeatedly criticized for a lack of transparency, says this and other autonomous bodies are unnecessary.
López Obrador has previously released information from the government tax bureau about Mexican journalists who have criticized his administration.
