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Leaders of MS-13 negotiated with Bukele ahead of his 2019 presidential landslide and gave him a sometimes violent get-out-the-vote effort in 2021 legislative elections, the U.S. Justice Department has alleged.
The 2021 victory gave Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party a legislative supermajority that allowed the term-limited president to cull the country’s supreme court, oust the attorney general, and blow through El Salvador’s constitution to run for and win a second term.
In return, MS-13 leaders received prison privileges, financial benefits − and a ban on extraditions to the United States, U.S. prosecutors, Salvadoran media and people familiar with the negotiations told USA TODAY.
An examination of Bukele’s past shows how a gifted young politician, who once described himself as “,” rose to power with the help of a Communist guerilla commander, Venezuelan oil money – and a winning deal with MS-13’s bloodstained leadership.
The most important U.S. source on Bukele’s MS-13 ties is a task force created during Trump's first administration.
Joint Task Force Vulcan was launched in 2019. It was staffed by bloodhounds from the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, the DEA and others with one mission: “To destroy MS-13, a vile and evil gang of people,” Trump said at the time.
Vulcan tore into the task. While winning terrorism and drug indictments against MS-13’s Ranfla, or board of directors, investigators discovered a group that was closer to an armed insurgency than a traditional street gang.
The 2021 victory gave Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party a legislative supermajority that allowed the term-limited president to cull the country’s supreme court, oust the attorney general, and blow through El Salvador’s constitution to run for and win a second term.
In return, MS-13 leaders received prison privileges, financial benefits − and a ban on extraditions to the United States, U.S. prosecutors, Salvadoran media and people familiar with the negotiations told USA TODAY.
An examination of Bukele’s past shows how a gifted young politician, who once described himself as “,” rose to power with the help of a Communist guerilla commander, Venezuelan oil money – and a winning deal with MS-13’s bloodstained leadership.
The most important U.S. source on Bukele’s MS-13 ties is a task force created during Trump's first administration.
Joint Task Force Vulcan was launched in 2019. It was staffed by bloodhounds from the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, the DEA and others with one mission: “To destroy MS-13, a vile and evil gang of people,” Trump said at the time.
Vulcan tore into the task. While winning terrorism and drug indictments against MS-13’s Ranfla, or board of directors, investigators discovered a group that was closer to an armed insurgency than a traditional street gang.
