\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t President Javier Milei defended former La Libertad Avanza (LLA) lawmaker Jos\u00e9 Luis Espert, who withdrew from the legislative race in 2025 after being accused of receiving money from an alleged drug trafficker, after United States prosecutors dropped charges against the man.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Argentine businessman Federico \u201cFred\u201d Machado was facing charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and tax fraud in the U.S. when the scandal broke out, leading to Espert dropping out from the congressional race after U.S. investigators revealed that the libertarian politician had received US$200,000 from a trust owned in part by Machado in 2020.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, La Naci\u00f3n newspaper reported that Machado reached an agreement with prosecutors to drop the drug trafficking charges in exchange for pleading guilty to money laundering and tax fraud, a deal that now must be accepted by a judge to be completed.<\/p>\n
The arrangement would mean that Machado avoids facing a jury trial for drug trafficking.<\/p>\n
After the news broke, Milei took to social media to claim Espert was the victim of an \u201cinfamous political and media operation\u201d against him that forced him to drop out of the congressional race.<\/p>\n
The accusations are similar to the ones the president makes to defend his Chief of Staff Manuel Adorni, who is also in hot water over an investigation for alleged illicit enrichment.<\/p>\n
Adorni was found to have purchased two undeclared properties and made several expensive trips since he became a government official in 2023. The judiciary believes such large expenditures do not match his declared income.<\/p>\n
Milei accuses the press President Milei wrote a lengthy X post on Sunday saying that journalists \u201cdestroyed\u201d Espert\u2019s reputation, \u201cpushed him to ostracism, and aimed to turn him into a criminal\u201d due to the coverage of the ex lawmaker\u2019s links with Machado.<\/p>\n
After U.S. investigators revealed in September 2025 that Espert had received the US$200,000 linked to Machado, the former lawmaker said it had been a payment for providing services as an economist to a mining company owned by Machado, a job he wasn\u2019t able to fulfill due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
According to Milei, Espert was \u201cdefamed\u201d and \u201chis life was destroyed\u201d only because \u201che defended the ideas of freedom,\u201d and demanded that journalists and politicians publicly apologize.<\/p>\n
While Milei said that the U.S. judiciary has now accepted Machado\u2019s innocence plea regarding the drug trafficking charges, this has not yet been formalized, as judge Bill Davis will address this on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Jos\u00e9 Luis Espert, ALWAYS on the side of truth and freedom,\u201d Milei said.<\/p>\n
The president\u2019s comments come after months of silence about Espert, and amid the scandal involving Adorni, which \u2014 according to many pollsters \u2014 has contributed to a large drop in his popularity.<\/p>\n
Fred Machado\u2019s judicial situation Milei did not mention in his X post that Machado, currently in prison in Oklahoma after being extradited to the U.S. in November, pleaded guilty to the charges of money laundering and tax fraud in a deal with the case\u2019s prosecutors.<\/p>\n
While he had initially said he did not commit those crimes, he has now changed his strategy in exchange for having the drug trafficking charges dropped and getting a shorter sentence, according to La Naci\u00f3n reporter Hugo Alconada Mon.<\/p>\n
Machado\u2019s hearing will take place in a Texas court as part of a case that also investigated his business partner, Debra Lynn Mercer-Erwin, who was sentenced to 16 years of prison for drug trafficking in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Javier Milei defended former La Libertad Avanza (LLA) lawmaker Jos\u00e9 Luis Espert, who withdrew from the legislative race in 2025 after being accused of receiving money from an alleged drug trafficker, after United States prosecutors dropped charges against the man.\u00a0 Argentine businessman Federico \u201cFred\u201d Machado was facing charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":64554,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[794,61,294,59],"tags":[16682,89,16683,86],"class_list":["post-64553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fred-machado","category-javier-milei","category-jose-luis-espert","category-politics","tag-fred-machado","tag-javier-milei","tag-jose-luis-espert","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}