Former defense secretary Mark Esper said Trump suggested missiles to wipe out Mexico’s drug cartels.
He suggested shooting missiles at drug labs in Mexico at least twice in 2020, Esper said.
Esper recounted the exchange in his memoir, excerpts of which were published by The New York Times.
Former President Donald Trump suggested launching missiles into Mexico to destroy cartels’ drug labs, the former defense secretary Mark Esper wrote in his upcoming memoir, according to The New York Times.
Several excerpts from Esper’s book, “A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times,” were published by the Times on Thursday. The memoir will be published on May 10.
Esper, who served as defense secretary from July 2019 until November 2020, wrote in the book that Trump had become increasingly unhappy about drugs coming through the Mexican border.
A DEA report on drugs and drug trafficking details what the agency calls cartel influence in the US.
Security experts and cartel operatives in Mexico dispute the DEA’s depiction.
They say the links are more tenuous than how the DEA describes them.
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — The US Drug Enforcement Administration recently released its annual National Drug Threat Assessment, in which it maps out the states where Mexican drug cartels have gained “influence.”
When they were asked about that depiction of cartel presence in the US, security experts and cartel sources told Insider “it’s bulls—.”
The DEA’s report said Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) “maintain great influence” in most US states, with the Sinaloa cartel and the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación showing the “biggest signs of expansion.”
They’ve used complex schemes to disguise millions in drug proceeds, making them seem to be legitimate transactions, according to law enforcement sources and court files.
A Chinese money-launderer was about to pick up Mexican drug-cartel cash in Chicago, federal authorities say, when his plans suddenly changed.
They say the suspected launderer got a call from a man he thought was a Mexican money courier who told him they needed to change their meeting place because he’d spotted a cop.
“You Asian, I’m Mexican — not a good look,” the courier said in the 2017 phone call, court records show.
