Chapo Trial in New York
Defense Rests After Calling Only One FBI Agent to Testify

The eleven-week trial of Chapo Guzman rested yesterday with the defense presenting only one witness, an FBI agent.  The entire defense presentation lasted less than an hour.  The prosecution presented 56 witnesses.  There had been some speculation Chapo might testify on his own behalf, a risky strategy sometimes used when evidence seems overwhelming. In the end he did not.

During the trial the defense team suggested the Sinaloa Cartel was actually run by Ismael (El Mayo Zambada), who has never been apprehended, and that the case against Chapo amounts to a conspiracy between the government of Mexico, the government of the US, and El Mayo Zambada to destroy Chapo.

The trial has offered a window into the operations of one of the largest drug cartels in the world, ranging from transportation of cocaine from Colombia to Mexico, the pattern of bribery and payoffs to Mexican officials,  and operations in the mountains of Sinaloa.  Perhaps the most dramatic revelation came from a Colombian witness who claimed Chapo had paid a $100 million bribe to President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto in October 2012 through a transfer from a woman identified as "comadre Maria."  Peña Nieto, the witness said, had asked for $250 million.

 If convicted Chapo may well die in a US jail, unlikely to be able to escape via tunnel as he did once before in better, more legendary, times.