"In his opening statement on Tuesday, Lichtman told jurors that US prosecutors had dreamed “for decades” of convicting Guzmán, adding: “The world is focusing on this mythical El Chapo figure.”

Lichtman told the court his client was not the real leader of a cartel that sent tons of cocaine into the US, and sought to shift blame to Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, another alleged drug trafficker in the cartel’s leadership.

Zambada remains on the loose in Mexico, Lichtman claimed, because of bribes that “go up to the very top”, including hundreds of millions of dollars paid to the current and former presidents of Mexico.

“This is a case that will require you to throw out much of what you were taught to believe in about the way governments work and how they behave, governments in South and Central America and Mexico and even the United States,” Lichtman told the jurors. “This is a case which will require you to open your minds to the possibility that government officials at the very highest level can be bribed, can conspire to commit horrible crimes – that American law enforcement agents can also be crooked.”

A spokesman for the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, called the allegations “completely false and defamatory”. Former president Felipe Calderón dismissed them as “absolutely false and reckless”."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/14/el-chapo-trial-opening-statement-mexican-presidents-bribes

"For the defence, Lichtmann said Guzmán had been “scapegoated” ever since the murder of Mexican Cardinal Juan Jesús Posada Ocampo in 1993 (which has been hitherto ascribed to members of the Tijuana Cartel). Lichtman said the assassination was a hit by the Mexican government “to shut the Cardinal up” – then blame Guzmán in order to “scapegoat” him, he said

Lichtman pledged to reveal an “uglier side to the story, a side that the governments of Mexico and the United States do not want you to hear”, about “how government officials at the very highest levels can be bribed” and “allow drug kingpins to operate openly … mostly for money”. He specified the two Mexican presidents, though not by name.

Lichtman mocked what he called the celebrity of Guzmán, saying his client’s image and name were “in films and articles, on hats, t-shirts and lunchboxes”; Guzmán, he said, had “become a myth not only worldwide, but also to the prosecution”.

He said the cartel was being run by “a man who has never been to jail … who is not having films made about him, has not meet Sean Penn, who is not on lunchboxes, a man you’ve never heard of: Ismael Zambada García, known as El Mayo”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/13/el-chapo-trial-of-mexican-cartel-boss-begins-in-new-york