The honour-loss lawsuit filed by the legal counsel of a Mexican federal executive comes in response to defense lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman questioning President Shainbaum’s efforts to combat corruption.
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CHICAGO – Mexican government President Claudia Sheinbaum is suing an American lawyer for El Chapo after he poses doubts about his lawyer’s efforts to combat corruption and the cartel.
Shanebaum told Mexican reporters on July 15 that the country was suing Jeffrey Lichtman, a New York-based litigator best known for defending Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and his sons, Obigio Guzman Lopez and Joa Kingsman Lonrompez. The Honorary Discount Lawsuit comes in response to comments by Lichtmann that show that clients of the Sinaloa cartel can shed light on public corruption in Mexico related to the Morena party of Sinbaum.
“Moral and political authority is necessary to govern Mexico and to deserve our people. So, the certainty of that authority – my history speaks for me,” Sinbaum said. The agency that filed the suit was a federal enforcement officer or attorney in Spanish for the Consejero Jurídico Del Ejecutivo Federal, she said.
Lichtman’s remarks about Sheinbaum and other Mexican regimes took place outside federal court in Chicago, where he represented El Chapo’s son Obigio Guzman Lopez. Guzman Lopez is expected to work with American authorities fighting the cartel, including sharing information about corrupt civil servants, in exchange for pleading guilty to accusations that include international drug trafficking and murder.
Longtime litigators laughed at the Mexican president’s response.
“If this was more than political grandeur for her base, Shanebaum was suing me, a civilian American citizen, in American courts, not in Mexico, where the lawsuit has no teeth,” Lichtman told USA Today. “This is why she felt she needed to blame me to represent a client charged with a crime rather than addressing the many difficult issues her country faces.
Officials at the Mexican Embassy in Washington, DC did not provide copies of the lawsuit.
What is the impact on the lawsuit?
Experts follow the incident and found that Mexico’s efforts to sue civilians in other countries are unusual, if not unprecedented. One Mexican scholar called it a “scene,” which could hurt Mexico more than an American lawyer who aims to discredit it.
“It’s all like a show,” Guadalupe Correa Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University, told USA Today. “I don’t think she’s serious about this. It’s just a spectacle… but the Trump administration wins overall, reinforcing the false narrative that Mexico is “drugs.” ”
President Donald Trump recently said on July 16 that the cartel has tremendous control over Mexico and its politicians. The president’s comments came when he signed a bill extending the stricter sentence for fentanyl trafficking.
Correa Cabrera, author of Los Zetas: Mexico’s criminal enterprise, energy and civil war is also known as Lichtman’s comment.
What did Lichtman say?
Comments at the heart of the lawsuit came outside of federal courtrooms in Chicago. There, Lichtman represented El Chapo’s son at the guilty plea hearing. Guzman Lopez is one of the sons of Chapitos or drug lords who took over the cartel in 2017 after arrest and extradition.
Lichtman had answered a question from a reporter in the Darksen Federal Court, alleging that Mexican President Sinbaum had made a deal with Guzman Lopez, the United States said he was negotiating with terrorists.
“It’s far from me to defend the US government… they’re not my friends in these cases,” said the lawyer who represented El Chap in 2018.
Lichtmann refers to Mexico’s public corruption case and cartel leaders, where Mexican authorities say “didn’t do anything.”
Mexican authorities are essentially at war with the cartels in parts of the country, and attempts to arrest the boss have led to serious battles, including capturing Guzman Lopez in 2023.
Lichtman also responded about Sinbaum’s criticism in a social media post.
Why is the Mexican Sinbaum suing?
Experts say President Sheinbaum’s case against El Chapo’s lawyer may not reach anywhere in court, but it may not be a real goal.
“The president of the Mexican government will speak to Mexican citizens, send authorities’ messages and reject what their lawyers say,” said Jess Perez Caballero, a researcher at El Collegio de la Frontera Norte, a university in Tijuana. “This is a way to preemptively negate future news about confessions made by detainees like Ovidio Guzmán.”
Perez Caballero said the lawsuit undermines the credibility that Lichtman is building for Guzman Lopez before his words are considered “common sense.”
Ultimately, Mexican authorities fear that Guzman Lopez’s account could become a default story for U.S. authorities, Perez Caballero said.
Guzman Lopez’s brother and fellow Chapito Joaquin Guzman Lopez also holds US custody. According to federal officials, US authorities arrested him in El Paso, Texas in July 2024. He pleaded not guilty in the Northern District of Illinois and is awaiting trial.
