Ken Salazar Says He Didn’t ‘Lie’ About the Capture of ‘El Mayo’; ‘It Wasn’t Our Plane or Our Operation’

ByLa Redacción

This article by La Redacción originally appeared in the July 8, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

The former United States ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, hit back at President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo after the president accused him of “lying” about the participation of US agents in the operation to detain Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. “Allow me to answer you clearly: Attorney General Merrick Garland and I informed the Mexican government, in our public statements and on July 25 and 26, 2024, about the arrests of Ismael Zambada García and Joaquín Guzmán, that it was not our plane, nor our pilot, nor our operation. The truth is the truth,” the former official noted in a social media post.

During her morning press conference, the president referred to an interview with Salazar, in which he acknowledged that there was “no link” between the government of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Sinaloa cartel, after “the government of Mexico was lied to” about the degree of involvement of US agencies in the arrests.

The proof of that, she stressed, “is the display of the plane that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) presents as if it had been the result of an operation” of its own. “What agreements did that agency, or whoever took part, have with the criminal group?” she insisted in remarks made yesterday in reference to the Sinaloa Cartel. “In this case, everything seems to indicate that the ambassador (Salazar) lied,” she noted.