Trump's DOJ Killed Probe Into Puerto Rico Prison Officials Who Offered Inmates Drugs for Republican Votes

Donald Trump likes to claim that elections are rigged—when he loses them. But what happens when the Justice Department finds evidence of an election actually being rigged, not just rigged, but rigged by a Hispanic prison gang? That’s exactly what they found in Puerto Rico—and the incoming Trump administration quashed the investigation to shield a pro-Trump governor.

ProPublica has the exposé:

Leaders of the prison gang known as Los Tiburones, or the Sharks, were selling drugs to inmates not only for money, but for their votes. Specifically, votes for now-Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón, a longtime Republican and supporter of President Donald Trump, investigators found.

To make sure the inmates—many of whom were addicted—complied, the gang’s leaders threatened violence and to withhold drugs, the investigators learned. Corrections employees in on the plan looked the other way as the gang, formally known as Group 31, ran the enterprise.

What at first seemed like a routine drug case had turned into something bigger. Puerto Rico, along with just a couple of U.S. states, allows inmates to vote. Puerto Ricans living in the territory can vote in all contests except federal general elections. It is a felony to willfully offer money or gifts in exchange for support at the polls. A conviction carries fines of as much as $250,000 and imprisonment of up to two years.

Investigators had gathered solid evidence of election fraud implicating both inmates and staff, and they were working toward determining whether González-Colón or her campaign was involved, four people with knowledge of the case told ProPublica. …

But as federal prosecutors prepared an indictment against the inmates and staff in November 2024—just days after Trump won the election and González-Colón clinched the governorship—they received a surprising directive. Their bosses in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico instructed them to exclude the voting-related counts against the inmates and all charges against the prison staff, an investigation by ProPublica found. …

Soon after Trump took office, the lead prosecutor, Jorge Matos, was told by a supervisor to take the investigation no further, according to four people familiar with the case.

“Before the election, it was definitely full steam ahead,” said one person familiar with the case. “After the election, that all changed.” …

This sheds light on the administration’s rhetoric about being tough on crime, and on drugs, and on “election integrity.” All of that is just rhetoric, to be invoked as and when it serves the interests of gaining power and persecuting Trump’s enemies—then dropped as needed to ensure impunity for his friends and supporters.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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