Undermining Ongoing U.S. Investigations Doesn't Seem to Keep Marco Rubio Up at Night
We have had mad fun with Marco Rubio, the Incredible Shrinking Pol, since before he became Secretary of State. But now, from The Washington Post, comes a story that reveals that Rubio's soul has been shrinking even faster than his political prospects have been.
In the days before the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, the president of that country demanded something for himself: the return of nine MS-13 gang leaders in U.S. custody. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a March 13 phone call with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, promised the request would be fulfilled, according to officials familiar with the conversation. But there was one obstacle: Some of the MS-13 members Bukele wanted were “informants” under the protection of the U.S. government, Rubio told him. To deport them to El Salvador, Attorney General Pam Bondi would need to terminate the Justice Department’s arrangements with those men, Rubio said. He assured Bukele that Bondi would complete that process and Washington would hand over the MS-13 leaders.
Foreign policy!
The deal would give Bukele possession of individuals who threatened to expose the alleged deals his government made with MS-13 to help achieve El Salvador’s historic drop in violence, officials said. For the Salvadoran president, a return of the informants was viewed as critical to preserving his tough-on-crime reputation. It was also a key step in hindering an ongoing U.S. investigation into his government’s relationship with MS-13, a gang famous for displays of excessive violence in the United States and elsewhere.
So undermining a federal investigation is now one of the duties of the Secretaries of State? It really is hard to keep up. Also, this paragraph is just beautiful.
The trade that Rubio brokered helped both Trump and Bukele tackle issues core to their political ascendancy. Trump, who campaigned on ridding the country of undocumented immigrants, needed a foreign partner to accept deportees regardless of nationality or legal considerations.
Oh, those pesky "legal considerations," which we used to call "laws." Of course, we used to call Marco Rubio principled.
esquire