Jeffrey Lichtman, defense attorney for Ovidio Guzmán, found himself at the center of an international controversy after statements he made following his client’s guilty plea in the United States provoked a harsh reaction from the Mexican government, culminating in the announcement of a defamation lawsuit by President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Lichtman returned to his podcast Beyond the Legal Limit, where he took the opportunity to recount how his participation in a press conference in Chicago culminated in an international controversy. In his intervention, the lawyer maintained that he was only seeking to defend his client’s rights and denied having a political agenda.
From Legal Defense to Political Dispute
The situation escalated after Ovidio Guzmán, son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, pleaded guilty to several drug trafficking charges before a United States court on July 11. At the end of the hearing, Lichtman made statements to the press and on social media in which he claimed that the Mexican government was the “public relations arm of a drug trafficking organization,” which provoked an immediate reaction in Mexico.
However, in his podcast, Lichtman claimed that after the back-and-forth, he had begun receiving threats and stated that he had been censored: “What happened next was very surprising. Threats, insults, attacks from a servile press aligned with the Mexican government, which came against me. I will not remain silent. I said what I had to say, and I did it. It’s nothing personal.”
Lichtman explained that his sole intention in making these statements was to protect the procedural rights of his clients, the Guzmán family, and that his public participation arose from his belief that foreign leaders were trying to influence the judicial process.
