Politics
Justice Dept. Aims to Use Terrorism Laws to Target Mexican Officials
The Trump administration this week instructed federal prosecutors to use terrorism statutes to target Mexican officials complicit in the narcotics trade, a significant escalation in its campaign against drug trafficking from Mexico, according to a U.S. official familiar with the remarks.
That new directive was announced Wednesday by Aakash Singh, an associate deputy attorney general, during an internal conference call with prosecutors in regional offices and represents an aggressive new tactic in the administration’s counternarcotics strategy that is almost certain to further strain its relationship with Mexico.
The initiative is the latest expansion of a hard-line policy that has defined President Trump’s agenda since his return to the White House last year, when he signed an executive order designating Latin American drug cartels as terrorist organizations. Within months, the U.S. military began blowing up boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing nearly 200 people the administration says are drug smugglers.
The Justice Department directive, which has not been previously reported, comes two weeks after federal prosecutors in New York indicted the governor of Mexico’s Sinaloa state, who is also a member of the country’s governing party, and nine other current and former Mexican officials. Days earlier, the death of two Central Intelligence Agency officers in a car crash in Mexico revealed a covert element of the White House’s clampdown on cartels. The developments have sharply intensified cross-border tensions.
Mr. Singh’s role includes setting priorities for the 93 U.S. attorneys, and his marching orders for them on Wednesday were blunt and strikingly undiplomatic.
“We should be tripling the number of indictments of corrupt government officials in Mexico who are using their power and their positions to enable terrorists and monsters who traffic in misery and poison,” he told colleagues, according to the U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Prior U.S. indictments accusing Latin American officials of drug crimes have frayed bilateral relationships that include cooperation on many fronts. But Mr. Singh seemed to relish that prospect as he urged prosecutors to charge Mexican officials with providing material support to terrorist organizations, in addition to drug crimes.
“If that is an unwelcome development for Mexican government officials and they are offended that we’re doing that, I cannot think of a single thing I care about less,” he said. “If we are shaming and embarrassing them in the process, then that is the cherry on top for us.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has made clear she is not happy with the U.S. decision last month to charge a sitting Mexican governor, Rubén Rocha Moya, and other officials with collaborating with drug cartels. She has refused to arrest Mr. Rocha, criticizing U.S. officials for not providing sufficient evidence, and she has repeatedly framed the accusations against him as a potential affront to Mexican sovereignty.
Mr. Rocha, who has temporarily stepped down, has denied the charges, instead accusing the Trump administration of politically targeting him to undermine Ms. Sheinbaum’s political party.
On Friday, the Mexican government said that one of the other indicted officials, Gerardo Mérida Sánchez, the former state security chief in Sinaloa, turned himself in to U.S. authorities earlier this week, crossing the border into Arizona from Nogales, Mexico.
A second indicted official, Enrique Díaz, a former finance official in Sinaloa, was arrested in Europe, according to a Mexican official who spoke on the condition of anonymity without authorization to speak publicly.
Ms. Sheinbaum said on Friday that she had “had a cordial and excellent conversation with President Trump,” in which they “reaffirmed the work we’re doing on security and the talks on trade.”
While the Justice Department has not publicly signaled its intention to charge Mexican politicians with terrorism crimes, senior administration officials made clear in recent days that the indictment of Mr. Rocha and other officials would not be a one-off.
“They are just as much responsible for the death and destruction of record amounts of Americans by cooperating, by conspiring, by helping producing this poison to come across the border and come into our country,” Terrance C. Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said during a Senate hearing on Tuesday. He added, “This is just the start.”
Taking a harder line against Mexican politicians is a shift in U.S. strategy, which has largely focused on prosecuting cartel leaders. Most recently, Mexico has sent more than 90 detained cartel operatives to the United States, including the notorious cartel boss Rafael Caro Quintero, who was convicted of masterminding the murder of a D.E.A. agent more than 40 years ago.
Those transfers reflect stronger cooperation on security issues under the Trump and Sheinbaum administrations, particularly compared with the relationship under Ms. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who pursued a less-lethal approach known as “hugs, not bullets.”
But the U.S. investigations into Mexican politicians have put Ms. Sheinbaum in a difficult political position. Many members of her dominant political party, Morena, have been deeply suspicious of the U.S. government, and several of the politicians who could be targeted belong to Morena.
Yet it seems likely that the cartel defendants Mexico sent to the United States could now help lead to such cases. Earlier this month, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said that those drug traffickers had shared valuable intelligence.
“One consequence of having a lot of the leaders of some of these cartels brought here over the past year, in cooperation with the Mexican government, is some of them will likely want to cooperate,” Mr. Blanche said in an interview at a border security industry event. “That cooperation could lead to additional charges.”
By publicly signaling its intention to go after politicians who have helped cartels smuggle cocaine, fentanyl and other drugs into the United States, the Trump administration may have a number of goals, analysts said.
At face value, the threat could have a chilling effect on government officials who actively or tacitly support the trade, and whose political campaigns can be bankrolled by kingpins. But it could also give U.S. officials leverage as they negotiate the future of a trade alliance that includes Canada, Mexico and the United States ahead of a July 1 deadline. Mr. Trump’s frequent threats to carry out unilateral military action against the cartels on Mexican soil also hang over those talks.
“Many people will see this as a heavy-handed move against Mexico, which under Sheinbaum has done much more than any of her predecessors on these issues,” said Roberta S. Jacobson, who served as ambassador to Mexico during the Obama administration.
Because many of the officials the Justice Department could charge are from Ms. Sheinbaum’s Morena Party, “it could put her in perhaps the worst possible position,” Ms. Jacobson said.
Top officials in Ms. Sheinbaum’s government are frustrated with how the Trump administration has handled the indictment of Mr. Rocha, the Sinaloa governor, according to the Mexican official who spoke about Mr. Díaz.
Her government has handed over virtually every criminal defendant the Trump administration has asked for, this person said, yet it has received little information from their interrogations, making it difficult to collaborate on investigations. At the same time, Ms. Sheinbaum has publicly complained that the United States has denied dozens of extradition requests from Mexico.
The United States has charged top officials in Latin America with drug crimes for decades. Such cases have often scrambled power structures and political dynamics across the region, but the drug trade remains a behemoth that generates billions in profits, driven by strong demand from Americans.
High-profile prosecutions the Justice Department has pursued in recent years include the cases of Nicolás Maduro, the former leader of Venezuela seized in Caracas during a brazen operation carried out by U.S. Special Operations forces in January, and of Genaro García Luna, a former top law enforcement official in Mexico. Mr. Maduro is awaiting trial alongside his wife, Cilia Flores, in New York. Mr. García Luna was sentenced to 38 years in prison in 2024, following his conviction at trial in New York.
Another prominent case, involving Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, had an unusual twist. A little more than a year after a judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison for his role in the trade of 400 tons of cocaine, Mr. Trump pardoned him, heeding a request from Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser, and other right-wing figures.
One American case against a senior Mexican official — Salvador Cienfuegos, a former defense minister who was arrested at the Los Angeles airport in 2020 and charged with having ties to the violent H-2 cartel — backfired badly. The Justice Department dropped its charges against Mr. Cienfuegos under pressure from the Mexican government, which threatened to expel U.S. agents and subsequently passed legislation that severely restricted bilateral security cooperation.
Going forward, Mr. Singh, a top aide to Mr. Blanche known for an abrasive style, said that the Justice Department intended to take a zero-leniency approach. In addition to charging politicians with drug and firearms felonies, which can lead to lengthy prison terms, prosecutors should seek to also charge them with material support for terrorist groups, he said.
Convictions can result in prison terms of up to 15 years, or life, if the underlying offense resulted in a death.
But so far, the Justice Department has used terrorism charges sparingly against cartels. A year ago, prosecutors charged two leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel with material support for terrorism in connection with their alleged efforts to smuggle large amounts of drugs into the United States.
Mr. Singh said the department wanted to pursue more of those cases. “We need to be treating these people like the terrorists they are,” he said.
Maria Abi-Habib contributed reporting.
President Trump, a former real estate mogul who knows a few things about construction projects, says there is “no harder zoning thing to get” than a helipad. But he is building one at the White House, and building it fast.
Such projects usually require a developer to navigate a complex web of zoning laws, airspace regulations and environmental impact studies, while negotiating with town councils and fighting off community pushback. Construction at the White House can often face additional hurdles.
But Mr. Trump has encountered no such difficulties as he quickly proceeds with construction of a black granite helipad on the South Lawn. He has not asked Congress or any review panel, such as the Commission of Fine Arts, to approve the project.
Past presidents have involved Congress and review panels in changes to the White House grounds, though Mr. Trump has asserted that he has the right to undertake major construction projects, such as a new 90,000-square-foot ballroom, without congressional approval. That project is currently the subject of litigation.
A White House spokesman said in an email that “operational upgrades to the White House grounds, such as the helipad installation, do not require commission reviews.”
Work on the helipad — which will be 100 feet in diameter and feature a presidential seal — started last month, shortly after a makeshift stadium built to host an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight significantly damaged the South Lawn.
Dana White, the U.F.C. president, said that his organization had set aside $700,000 to repair the lawn after the June 14 event. But Mr. Trump instead decided to forge ahead immediately with a helipad he had long wanted.
Why Trump is building a helipad
The helipad would allow Mr. Trump to use the latest generation of Sikorsky helicopters as Marine One on White House grounds — a move multiple administrations had avoided because the new, more powerful helicopters were likely to damage the South Lawn during landing.
The Navy began the search in 2010 for helicopters to replace the two models that have been used to transport the president and vice president for more than four decades — the VH-3D and the VH-60N. It purchased 23 VH-92A helicopters, including two test aircraft, at about $215 million apiece, with a total cost estimated at $5 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The new helicopters are produced by Sikorsky, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, which is building the helipad as a donation. They joined the fleet between 2014 and 2021 and underwent a period of testing. The new generation of helicopters has occasionally been known to scorch the grass with engine exhaust while landing — an issue found during a training session in September 2018.
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was the first president to fly on a VH-92A, on his way to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 2024. But no new helicopter has yet transported a president to and from the South Lawn.
Marine One landed on the South Lawn grass for decades, and portable aluminum pads were rolled out to catch the wheels.
Mr. Trump said the new helicopters were “more powerful than the old ones. And when you land on the grass, it’s not that the grass gets discolored, it gets ripped out.”
The VH-92A has two engines with more than three times the capacity of those of the VH-3D, the current Marine One model, pushing more heat to the ground.
Lockheed Martin, a major defense contractor, is paying for the helipad project, which Mr. Trump estimated would cost between $5 million and $6 million.
“They didn’t tell us how powerful these helicopters were, and they felt a little bit guilty,” Mr. Trump said.
According to a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin, the company has a “long history of supporting projects in both the Washington, D.C., area and across the country. This specific contribution was made to the National Park Service. Our engagement with the federal government is guided by rigorous ethics and compliance standards and conducted in full accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.”
More red tape for a Mar-a-Lago helipad
Mr. Trump is also trying to build a helipad at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. But that project is moving much more slowly than the one at the White House.
The Mar-a-Lago project has been the subject of local historic preservation commission review, multiple public hearings, negotiations with town lawyers and votes by the Town Council.
Because Mar-a-Lago is a historic property, any changes there must be approved by the Palm Beach Landmarks Preservation Commission, said Joanne O’Connor, the town attorney for Palm Beach.
Mr. Trump had installed a helipad at the resort during his first administration, but it was dismantled after he left office.
The town is allowing Mr. Trump to build a new helipad at Mar-a-Lago but has placed limits on its use after his presidency. Any helicopter trips to or from Mar-a-Lago after he leaves office can be carried out only if approved by the Secret Service and in the event of an emergency, Ms. O’Connor said. The helipad cannot be used, for instance, to facilitate a golf outing.
“The concern was balancing the health, safety and welfare of the president with the interests of the town residents and the quiet enjoyment of their residential property,” Ms. O’Connor said.
No such review is taking place for the changes Mr. Trump is making at the White House.
Mr. Trump spoke recently about the difficulty most people encounter when trying to have helipads approved at their properties.
“I always was lucky, I always got helipads,” he said in remarks from the Oval Office. “Other people don’t. Very hard to get. The hardest thing to get is a helipad, OK?”
The South Lawn’s future
The helipad would significantly reshape the South Lawn, which has historically hosted events and ceremonies, including the annual White House Easter Egg Roll.
A White House official said events on the South Lawn would not be affected by the new helipad and would continue as usual.
“It can be used for other things when helicopters aren’t landing,” Mr. Trump said this month. “You can have other things out there like events. You could have news conferences literally on it because it’s the right size. So by doing this, we solved the problem, and we’ll be able to finally retire 45-year-old helicopters.”
Previous administrations have prioritized preservation of the White House property over permanent changes to the South Lawn. During the Biden administration, building a helipad was not high on the president’s priority list, said Andrew Bates, who served as a White House spokesman.
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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche came out swinging against Sen. Adam Schiff on Wednesday, denying allegations of self-dealing and intentional refusal-to-recuse in President Donald Trump’s cases, while accusing the California Democrat of lying.
Schiff sparred with Blanche over several legal matters he said prove the nominee is unfit for the job of America’s top law enforcement officer, citing what he described as serious conflicts of interest. Blanche denied the allegations while telling Schiff he was misstating ethics rules and botching key timelines.
Schiff pressed Blanche on whether he met with Justice Department ethics lawyers about his prior representation of Trump in the Stormy Daniels, Mar-a-Lago classified documents, and Jan. 6 cases.
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Sen. Adam Schiff, left, and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. (Al Drago/Getty Images; Eric Lee/Getty Images)
Blanche affirmed and said he has recused himself from future litigation or Justice Department business involving any of those suits. But Schiff countered that Blanche reportedly told a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that there was no conflict of interest in the Justice Department firing prosecutors linked to Jan. 6 or other cases.
Blanche soon fired back when Schiff criticized him for moving to vacate Jan. 6-related convictions for 12 members of far-right groups.
“I was the acting attorney general – so yes, my department moved to dismiss,” he said, adding that there was no reason for him to recuse himself when Schiff pressed him further.
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“From the Proud Boys matter?” Blanche responded with a puzzled look.
“You’re a lawyer, you know the rules,” Blanche told the Massachusetts-born graduate of Harvard Law.
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“There are rules that say when I have to recuse and that’s not one of them,” Blanche said.
“There are rules,” Schiff agreed. “And when you’re told to recuse yourself from investigations that you handle for the president…” – “I always do,” Blanche cut in – “you’re supposed to recuse yourself,” Schiff finished.
Schiff noted that the second volume of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on Trump has not been released and said the Justice Department has opposed making it available.
Blanche denied having anything to do with the decision and pointed out it is not the Justice Department, but a federal judge in Miami, that has prohibited its release.
“If you went into court asking them to release it, it would be released by now,” Schiff argued.
Blanche shot back: “What you’re saying happens not to be true – I did not do that.”
“You can’t accuse me of violating my ethical rules and then lie about what I did,” he continued,
Schiff asked Blanche at length what allegedly evolved in his professional life that led him to be under such criticisms.
“What I don’t understand, Todd Blanche, is what happened to the Todd Blanche who was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York? What happened to the prosecutor people had respect for,” he said.
“What happened to the prosecutor who said that there wouldn’t be a whiff of political partisanship and then prosecutes the president’s enemies over seashells cases, over making a video stating the plain law in the Constitution?” Schiff said – appearing to reference investigations into former FBI Director Jim Comey’s “8647” post that critics said amounted to a threat on Trump’s life.
“I think Robert Caro had it right when he said that power doesn’t corrupt as much as it reveals. I suspect it has just revealed who you are and who you are as someone willing to sacrifice everything you once believed in for that title, for that position of attorney general,” Schiff claimed.
“I am still here. I am the same exact person I was when I was a federal prosecutor in the SDNY,” Blanche replied.
The exchange led to further criticism of Schiff, including from the Trump-appointed prosecutor in his home region:
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“Facts are not Senator Schiff’s strong suit,” claimed First Assistant U.S. Attorney for Central California Bill Essayli.
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Former Alabama federal prosecutor Jay Town called the exchange “excellent.”
“What [Blanche] is essentially saying is that the Justice Department has gone back to the fundamentals of increasing prosecutions and lowering crime nationwide, unlike the Garland DOJ targeting parents, Catholics, etc.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Schiff for comment.
WASHINGTON — President Trump appeared poised to question the security of U.S. elections with a planned prime-time speech Thursday night, eliciting fears from Democrats and voting rights advocates that he is planning yet another play for federal control over voting in November’s midterms.
The exact reason for the speech has not been disclosed by the White House, with Trump only characterizing it to reporters this week as “really, really big news.” He confirmed it would have to do with “free and fair elections.”
The Washington Post reported, citing sources, that Trump planned to argue that there are vulnerabilities in the nation’s election infrastructure and claim that China had accessed U.S. voter data. The White House declined to confirm any such details Wednesday.
The announcement of the speech set off concerns among the president’s political opponents, as well as elections experts and voting rights advocates, that Trump could again escalate claims that the nation’s voting system is vulnerable to domestic fraud and foreign attacks.
He has previously said that Republicans should “nationalize” election administration, a job that falls to the states under the Constitution, and has pressured his party to tighten federal voting rules.
“We don’t know anything about what he might say … or what he might try to do with his very limited powers, as the president, over elections,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research. “I expect we’re going to hear a lot of rehashed and debunked claims.”
The president could potentially use new claims to argue that the nation is facing an emergency in upcoming elections that necessitates further federal intervention into voting, Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee, which has oversight of elections, said in an interview with The Times.
“This is going to be the rationale for declaring a national emergency,” Morelle said. “It’s transparent that he is creating the emergency and he’s creating the evidence out of whole cloth to suggest there is an emergency.”
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees federal elections, told The Times on Wednesday that Trump was using a known playbook to “[sow] doubt about the outcome before a single vote has been cast.”
“All signs show that tomorrow’s speech will be more of the same: debunked conspiracy theories offered up not because they’re true, but because chaos and doubt are the only cards he has left to play,” Padilla said.
The speech, which Trump announced on social media Monday, comes four months ahead of midterm elections that will determine whether his party retains legislative control in Washington.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt dismissed news reports about what Trump might say in the 6 p.m. PDT speech as speculation, and said “nobody knows yet what President Trump will ultimately say.”
The address also comes as Trump’s ceasefire with Iran has fallen apart, renewing expectations for increased gas prices, and his approval rating on the economy has steadily dropped. On Tuesday, it also became public that Trump had paid $5.6 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll, as ordered by a jury that in 2023 found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming her.
“What we’re going to be talking about Thursday is, it doesn’t get bigger,” Trump told reporters who asked Tuesday about the speech. “Because without free and fair elections you don’t have a country.”
Trump has spread baseless claims of widespread election fraud for years. But his prioritization of his claims about the voting system — even as much of the nation’s attention is on cost-of-living issues — has been on particularly clear display in recent days.
He has aggressively lobbied reluctant Republican senators to pass his voter ID legislation, refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill over it; he fired all remaining members of the bipartisan U.S. Elections Assistance Commission; and his Justice Department said it would send election monitors to six states.
Since the midterm primaries began, Trump has also sown doubt about election security — chiefly in California, where he suggested Democrats had cheated or attempted to in the gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral primaries.
Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, whose state was often at the center of Trump’s 2020 fraud claims, said the president’s speech posed a threat to voting rights.
“I expect him to use whatever he puts out there on Thursday as a pretext, either for some attempted unconstitutional use of federal power to interfere in the election,” Ossoff said Tuesday on MS Now, “or to give his proxies and loyalists in state and local jurisdictions some cover for whatever they might attempt, or to lay the groundwork for challenging the result.”
Any effort to federalize or take over elections would face serious legal obstacles, said Nahal Kazemi, a Chapman University law professor. Although Congress can pass laws regarding election administration, as it did with the Voting Rights Act, the executive branch doesn’t play a role in running elections.
“You run into essentially a brick wall that is the Constitution, which makes very plain that states run elections,” Kazemi said.
When it comes to concerns about foreign interference, experts say there is little evidence of other countries attempting to hack systems or change votes. Instead, foreign actors have largely operated via disinformation campaigns, as the U.S. determined had occurred in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
“Of the information that is available to us now, there’s no reason to be alarmed about the possibility that a foreign adversary is going to take over election systems,” said Kazemi, who has studied foreign election interference.
One of the things that helps make American elections generally secure, she said, is that they are not centralized but are run by thousands of counties. Hacking into so many voting systems would be extraordinarily difficult for a foreign adversary, she said.
Jenny Farrell, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California, said California “takes elections security extremely seriously” and has one of the most secure systems in the country, subject to strict voter verification measures and intense chain of custody and auditing procedures.
Democrats have worked with elections experts in recent months on attempts to assure the public that U.S. elections are safe and secure. They have also tried to counter claims by Trump that mail ballots and voting machines are unreliable.
A slew of 2020 election reviews, including by Trump’s first administration, concluded that Trump lost and Biden won. Election experts say there is no evidence that widespread fraud determined the outcome of the election.
A judge also found that claims pushed by Trump and his attorneys that the company Dominion Voting Systems manipulated votes cast through its machines in favor of Biden were untrue.
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