Thread by @alanfeuer

Today's early session of the Chapo trial saw the last bit of testimony from Vicente Zambada, the cartel heir and son of Mayo Zambada, Chapo's chief partner.
He added a little more to this odd story about how Chapo helped him quit the cartel.
nytimes.com/2019/01/04/nyr…

Vicente told the jurors that Chapo "knew I was going to come testify against him," adding that even though he implicated Chapo in many crimes, "My compadre Chapo is not the enemy."
One wonders if Chapo feels the same.

Chapo's lawyers have argued that Mayo is the real mastermind of the cartel, and on cross examination suggested that Mayo has remained at large in Mexico while several of his former partners and allies have either wound up dead or in prison.

The list was long:
2 Arellano-Felix bros in prison, 1 dead
Nacho Coronel dead
Guero Palma prison
Vicente Carillo Fuentes prison
2 Beltran Leyva bros dead, 1 in prison
Chapo on trial
Etc.

Vicente testified that both Mayo & Chapo passed info on their allies and enemies to the DEA, and the defense suggested that Mayo was ratting people out in order to remain free.
Of course, it's possible that Mayo was indeed ratting people out but Chapo is still a major drug dealer

When Vicente left we got interesting testimony from an FBI agent based in Tijuana about a raid at a villa in Cabo San Lucas where Chapo was supposedly holed up in 2012.
More than 50 Mexican special forces and Marines took part--but Chapo apparently escaped in the nick of time.

There was video of Chapo's room in disarray: his size 9 Nikes, a black baseball cap, snacks on the bed, some over the counter meds--even what seemed to be Chapo's underwear.

Seized in the raid was a notebook including one scrawl that seemed to reference the raid. The FBI guys also said the Mexican forces did not guard the back of the house as they were meant to.
The implication seemed to be that Chapo was tipped off and got out just in time.

There were even footprints leading from the back patio (w/a pool) down into a dry creek bed behind the house, the FBI guy testified.
The video clearly looked as if the occupants of the villa checked out in a hurry...

For the next two days the authorities searched for Chapo even sending Blackhawk helicopters up into the sky. They never found him.
They did however find some M4 rifles, grenade launchers and a pair of night vision googles in the villa. Also: a bill of sale for a $20 airplane.

Testimony has shifted gears again:
Now on the stand is Edgar Ivan Galvan, who pleaded guilty to running drugs and guns across the US border for the Sinaloa cartel.
It's the first time we've gotten testimony from what appears to be a relatively low level cartel worker bee.

Galvan said his life of crime began after his divorce in 2003 when he started hanging out in night clubs in Ciudad Juarez. He became "party friends" w/ a guy in his apartment complex, Antonio Marrufo. Marrufo, aka Jaguar, ran the pot trade in Juarez for a cartel called La Linea.

Cut to 2007.
Meeting Galvan again, Jaguar now boasts Chapo had just put him in charge of "cleaning Juarez" of all La Linea people. Chapo wanted control of Juarez. It was "personal," Galvan said.
According to Jaguar, Chapo said that "by his balls" he was going to take Juarez.

Why had Jaguar, who once worked for La Linea, taken a job as Chapo's chief killer eliminating La Linea?
Galvan said that Jaguar had been kidnapped in 2005 by a guy named JL, who worked for Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a La Linea leader. He wanted revenge against the group.

Jaguar's interests aligned here w/Chapo's. (He was fighting Carrillo Fuentes too for the lucrative Juarez crossing.)
Just before lunch, we got a foretaste of the violence.
Trying to recruit Galvan, Jaguar warned him not to go to Juarez b/c things "were going to get really ugly."

Galvan testified that he was at first leery of working for Jaguar, a notoriously violent guy. He recalled how Jaguar once took him to a house in Juarez in which one of the rooms had a white-tiled floor sloping toward a drain.
"That's where he killed people," Galvan said.

But going against his instincts Galvan went to work for Jaguar, first smuggling coke and pot from Juarez to El Paso then moving guns--including big ones like a 50-cal rifle--from El Paso to Juarez.

By this trial's standards his drug loads were paltry. He said he moved about a ton of weed & 250 kilos of coke from 2008 to 2011. By comparison, Vicente Zambada, son of Mayo Zambada & the cartel's heir apparent, testified last week about hatching a plan to ship 100 TONS of coke.

But Galvan--quiet, unassuming & not especially bright--had bad luck. He moved 4 or 5 gun shipments for Jaguar to help the cartel's war against La Linea before the El Paso cops stumbled onto his stash house after following a suspicious Volkswagon Jetta.

When he called Jaguar to report the raid, Jaguar was "really pissed," he said. And Jaguar wasn't the kind of guy you disappointed or messed around with. He never w/Jaguar after that day.

And even though he tried his hand a few more cross-border drug deals, none of them panned out. Within a year of the El Paso raid, he got busted while driving his car.
The little guy is now serving a 24-year sentence.

Oh.
Some of the guns seized in El Paso originated from the ATF's controversial Fast & Furious program designed to let illegal gun buyers go in hopes the weapons could be traced to cartel figures.
Chapo's lawyers wanted to bring up Fast & Furious. The judge would not allow it.