Chuck Ross of the Washington Free Beacon documents another case of legacy media malfeasance.
Establishment news outlets like CNN, the Associated Press, and the New York Times have embraced a new narrative about Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles: It doesn’t actually exist. Unmentioned in the coverage is the Biden administration’s 2023 extradition of a former Venezuelan spy chief whose “leadership of the Cártel de Los Soles inflicted immeasurable pain and suffering” on Venezuelans and Americans, as the Department of Justice put it at the time.
The claim that Cartel de los Soles is a nonexistent entity has taken hold after the State Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization led by Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. As President Donald Trump warned Maduro to “stop sending poison to our country” through the narcotics trade or face military action, his critics in the media downplayed the threat posed by Cartel de los Soles, arguing it is a leaderless network or that it doesn’t exist at all.
A CNN headline declared the cartel “may not technically exist.” AP said, “it’s not a cartel per se.” USA Today cited experts who claimed Cartel de los Soles “is not a real drug cartel.” New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg called Cartel de los Soles “a group that doesn’t exist.” The Guardian and other outlets echoed similar sentiments.
But officials in the Biden administration cast Cartel de los Soles as an organized, legitimate, and violent narco-terrorist outfit that operates within the Venezuelan government. In 2023, Manhattan U.S attorney Damien Williams announced the extradition of Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, also known as “El Pollo,” to face narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, and weapons charges.
The Biden DOJ’s press release announcing the indictment said Carvajal Barrios “coordinated with other members of the Cartel de los Soles” to ship 5.6 tons of cocaine from Venezuela bound for the United States.
