Following the unacceptable kidnapping of the legitimate Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and Congresswoman Cilia Flores, U.S. judicial authorities have decided to revoke the accusation that the president led the Cartel of the Suns. For more than a decade, this accusation was used to delegitimize the Chavista authorities, and two months ago it became the central propaganda weapon to justify the blockade of the Bolivarian Republic, the murder of more than a hundred crew members of ships in the Caribbean, the bombing of a sovereign country, and the kidnapping of two of its institutional authorities.
Meanwhile, hidden under a thick veil of secrecy, U.S. President Donald Trump has become the first head of state to govern for the drug cartels. During his first term, between 2017 and 2021, the tycoon signed 144 pardons and 94 commutations of sentences. A large part of these pardons were granted to criminals convicted of drug trafficking offenses. The most high-profile case was that of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced on March 8, 2024, to 45 years in prison for leading a drug trafficking network that sold 400 tons of cocaine within the United States, in association with Mexican Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. In its reasoning for the sentence, the court considered that Juan Orlando “turned Honduras into a narco-state between 2014 and 2022.” According to jurist Kermit Roosevelt, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the pardons granted by Trump to those convicted of drug trafficking are the result of financial contributions made by lobbyists and/or relatives of the convicted.
The shameless modus operandi used to secure the release of drug traffickers was exposed in leaks disseminated by legislative advisors, who revealed Marco Rubio’s close ties to the BGR Group, a lobbying organization tasked with securing the release of Juan Orlando Hernández. This consulting firm presents itself as focused on “high-performance personalized advisory and lobbying services.” According to the Foreign Agents Registration Office (FARA), Juan Orlando Hernández hired the BGR Group from 2018 until the end of his term in 2021, paying $660,000 annually to promote his image in the halls of the Capitol in Washington. Before Juan Orlando Hernández smuggled 400 tons of cocaine through Miami, the BGR Group was responsible for coordinating and guiding Marco Rubio’s Senate election campaigns in both 2010 and 2016. According to several Democratic senators’ advisors, it was Rubio who put Juan Orlando’s relatives in touch with BGR, which explains the dissemination of reports by the consulting firm in which Juan Orlando Hernández was characterized as “a key ally in the fight against organized crime.”
Rubio’s connection to drug traffickers is a family affair. As a teenager, the current Secretary of State lived for periods at the home of his older sister, Barbara, who was married to Cuban Orlando Cicilia, a prominent figure in Miami’s Cuban exile community and a member of the “cocaine jockeys.” Marco Rubio’s brother-in-law was the subordinate of one of Miami’s mafia bosses, Mario Tabraue, who had participated in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. When Cicilia was arrested, several kilos of cocaine were found in the home where Rubio was staying. Tabraue was sentenced to life in prison and Cicilia to 25 years. But both were released from prison after becoming cooperating informants. Cicilia managed to reinsert himself into the Miami rat pack thanks to the current Secretary of State, who arranged for him to obtain a real estate broker’s license, a credential that is not granted to former drug traffickers. Marco Rubio, already in the political race, managed to overcome that obstacle. The business of the “cocaine jockeys” was recreated by Brian De Palma in his film Scarface. Tabraue is portrayed in the film as the gentle Tony Montana. Good guys.
The Trump administration’s leniency toward drug traffickers included pardoning Ross William Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road, the largest online marketplace for illegal pills. The beneficiary had been sentenced to life in prison—without the possibility of parole—in 2015. Alice Marie Johnson, imprisoned for cocaine distribution, and Ronen Nahmani, convicted in 2015 for selling synthetic drugs in Florida, were also granted pardons. Weldon Angelos, sentenced to 55 years in prison for possession of military weapons and drug trafficking, enjoyed the same privilege. The same favor was granted to Pastor Otis Gordon, who, in addition to administering communion, was involved in drug distribution. Roy Wayne McKeever was another who deserved presidential clemency: he had been arrested in 1989 for trafficking marijuana from Mexico to Oklahoma. Chicago mob boss Larry Hoover also received a pardon from the New York tycoon. His colleague, Baltimore drug lord Garnett Gilbert Smith, smiled along with his associates upon receiving the news of the pardon. Sam Topeka, sentenced to ten years in prison for selling 80 kilograms of cocaine, was also favored. The same clemency was granted to Christopher Anthony Bryant, sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2022 for possession of weapons and distribution of several kilograms of cocaine, 1,300 doses of heroin, 1,700 methamphetamine pills, and 1,300 fentanyl pills.
The current U.S. president’s elective affinities with drug traffickers are nothing new. Joseph Weichselbaum was his partner in a helicopter rental company used to transport millionaires to Trump’s casino in Atlantic City. He was also one of his investors in several of his real estate ventures. In 1985, Weichselbaum was charged with 18 drug trafficking offenses. On that occasion, something astonishing happened: the case was transferred from Cincinnati to Ohio so that another judge could determine the sentence. The judge appointed was Maryanne Trump Barry, the current president’s older sister. When the prosecution denounced the defendant’s proximity to one of her associates, Maryanne recused herself but handed the case over to her close collaborator, Judge Harold Ackerman. The latter “took pity” on the drug trafficker Weichselbaum, who was sentenced to three years in prison—of which he served only 18 months—while his subordinates were sentenced to 20 years in prison. Before the verdict, Trump had written a letter to Judge Ackerman characterizing Weichselbaum as a “scrupulous, sincere, and diligent person” who was “a source of pride for the community.” In short: a businessman with drug-trafficking associates, who pardons drug traffickers and uses the pretext of narco-terrorism to bomb, carry out extrajudicial killings, and kidnap a president. Almost a tautology.