Ryan Wedding: Mexico’s president pushes back on FBI Director Kash Patel’s telling of pro-snowboarder’s arrest
By Holmes Lybrand, Valeria Leon, CNN
(CNN) — Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum pushed back during a press conference Thursday on suggestions that law enforcement in the country worked closely with the FBI to apprehend former Canadian Olympic snowboarder and alleged cocaine kingpin Ryan Wedding.
Instead, Sheinbaum said Wedding had self-surrendered and was handed over to US authorities.
“We are never going to accept joint operations or operations by US federal or state forces on our territory,” Sheinbaum said when asked about comments made by FBI Director Kash Patel on the operation. “If we collaborate, they give us information and we also give them information, but the operations on our territory are Mexican forces, that must be very clear.”
On Friday, after coming back to the US with Wedding apprehended, Patel specifically thanked Sheinbaum, other Mexican officials “and the military and law enforcement officers of Mexico” for working “hand-in-glove with our teams on the ground there to apprehend (Wedding) last night in Mexico City.”
Patel’s comments, made during a press conference at the California airport where Wedding landed back in the US did not mention, however, that Wedding had surrendered.
Wedding, who is accused of working with the Sinaloa Cartel to ship cocaine through Columbia to the US and Canada, had been hiding in Mexico for a decade, according to officials.
Wedding pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges before a California court on Monday. His attorney, Anthony Colombo, said this week that Wedding did not surrender and that US law enforcement was part of an arrest operation.
In a social media post last week, Patel claimed the FBI had arrested Wedding as part of “a zero-margin, high-risk operation.”
“I’m not going to get into further discussion with the FBI director,” Sheinbaum said Thursday, “but let it be clear that we are not going to accept operations, we always say this to President Donald Trump and they have seen that we have been making progress.”
Throughout the first year of Trump’s second term, Sheinbaum has repeatedly pushed back on suggestions that US law enforcement should be allowed to operate in the country, noting that Mexico will cooperate with its neighbor without subordinating itself or allowing its sovereignty to be violated.
Mexico’s secretary of security and citizen protection, Omar García Harfuch, and the US ambassador to Mexico, Ron Johnson, have both said that Wedding surrendered following the announcement of his arrest last week.
García Harfuch wrote on social media that Wedding “voluntarily surrendered” at the US Embassy in Mexico City the day before he was transported by the FBI to the US. Johnson also called it a “voluntary surrender.”
Patel, who was quick to tout the arrest of Wedding — one of the FBI’s top ten most wanted — did not say during his press conference whether Wedding turned himself in.
In a comment to CNN Thursday, the FBI referred CNN “to what officials said at the news conference in California on the day Wedding was brought to the U.S.”
The-CNN-Wire
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