They’re the greatest hits of the El Chapo trial.
A federal prosecutor on Wednesday ran through some of the wildest revelations from more than two months of testimony in the trial of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman — as she urged jurors to use their “common sense” in recognizing him as the leader of a massive narco trafficking empire.
“Who travels in armored cars with security guards? … Who has not one but a series of escape tunnels? … Who has a zoo with little trains,” said Assistant US Attorney Andrea Goldbarg during her closing statement for the prosecution in Brooklyn federal court.
“Who has an army of people fighting for him? … Who has diamond-encrusted pistols? … Who wiretaps his family and closest friends and has a scheme to wiretap an entire city?”
Throughout the trial, cartel turncoats and law enforcement witnesses have variously testified that the kingpin had his own private zoo — containing tigers, lions, panthers and deer — that he rode around on a “little train,” built an elaborate network of secret tunnels hidden below bathtubs in his hideouts, and was gifted multiple diamond-covered pistols with his initials and images of panthers on them.
Jurors also previously heard that Guzman was so paranoid that he bugged the phones of everyone in his orbit, including his wife and mistresses — a strategy that backfired when FBI agents flipped the Sinaloa Cartel’s IT guy and got the keys to his communication system.
Goldbarg played some recordings of Chapo’s wiretapped calls, telling jurors they offer “a window or sneak peak into how one of the top leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel managed his business on a day-to-day basis.”
Chapo’s defense lawyers are arguing that he is being used as a “scapegoat” for the real leaders of the cartel, and that his role in the operation has been overinflated.
The prosecution also offered the jury some visual reminders of their evidence from the case, laying out AK-47 rifles, bricks of cocaine and heroin — and a can of La Comadre pickled jalapeños, which witnesses have said his cartel once used to smuggle $500 million of Colombian cocaine into the US every year.
Meanwhile Wednesday, one of the jurors requested to speak with Judge Brian Cogan, asking him in a separate room whether Guzman is paying for his attorneys and whether he had a role in deciding the “defense’s presentation.”
Cogan told the juror the defense attorneys’ pay arrangements are “impermissible as evidence” and that neither the judge nor jurors are “supposed to know” what the defendant has discussed with his attorneys. The juror said she could put both questions aside in her deliberations.
Also Wednesday, actor Alejandro Edda — who plays Guzman in the hit Netflix series “Narcos: Mexico” — returned to the courtroom, where he used binoculars to observe his muse.
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