NY Times: Breitbart News Coverage of Peter Schweizer’s ‘Invisible Coup’ Prompts Trump’s State Department to Probe Mexican Consulates in U.S.
President Donald Trump’s State Department is probing all 53 Mexican consulates across the United States following extensive coverage of Breitbart News Senior Contributor Peter Schweizer’s latest book, The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon, by Breitbart News, the New York Times reports.
On Thursday, CBS News reported that the State Department would review the Mexican consulates “to align U.S. foreign policy with the Trump administration’s priorities.”
The New York Times, on Friday, revealed that Breitbart News’s coverage of Schweizer’s The Invisible Coup had prompted the State Department review, citing a recent interview Schweizer did with Breitbart Fight Club’s Founders Roundtable:
The review comes after claims have been circulating in conservative media in recent months that Mexican consulates interfere in American politics and encourage mass migration to the United States. [Emphasis added]
The accusations largely originated from Peter Schweizer, a right-wing author and contributor to Breitbart News who has promoted conspiracy theories about foreign government influence. His claims include that Mexican consular officials have praised protests against U.S. immigration policies, assisted migrants targeted by immigration raids and distributed Spanish-language textbooks to some schools, which discourages Mexican immigrants from assimilating. [Emphasis added]
In the Founders Roundtable interview cited by the Times, Schweizer was asked why the Trump administration had not yet sought to close some of Mexico’s consulates in the U.S.
“That can be done easily. The president can direct it,” Schweizer said. “The Secretary of State can carry it out. We’ve done it in the past. Let’s remember, in 2020, we ordered the Chinese Consulate in Houston, Texas, closed because of their widespread espionage. So, yes, this is something that’s easily done.”
In The Invisible Coup, Schweizer writes, the Mexican government “is blatantly interfering in our domestic politics, working with American political advisors to turn legal and illegal migrants inside the U.S. into a political force to wield for their benefit.”
Schweizer notes that former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) toured American cities in February 2017 with the purpose of rallying Mexican migrants in the U.S. against Trump’s border policies, which crippled drug cartel profits through strict immigration enforcement.
AMLO, in his attempts to upend Trump’s border policies, went as far as to suggest turning Mexico’s consulates into migrant defense offices, Schweizer writes — an unprecedented level of lobbying by a neighboring nation’s leader against a sitting American president.
“AMLO was not simply aiding migrants in their legal battles in the United States; he was calling for and working toward an electoral change inside the U.S.,” Schweizer writes. “A foreign leader so brazenly interfering in American politics was unprecedented, at least from a country with which the United States was not at war.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, in January, denied Schweizer’s reporting.
“Yesterday, the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs issued a statement. It involves a person who wrote a book, claiming that through our consulates, we are engaging in politics for or within the United States,” Sheinbaum said, referring to The Invisible Coup:
This is absolutely false. Consulates have a role determined by international laws, and what our consulates essentially do is provide protection and assistance to Mexicans in the United States. That is their job; it is fundamental and that is what they are dedicated to do. [Emphasis added]
We categorically deny that they are doing anything related to U.S. politics. We are very respectful. If we demand non-intervention from other countries, we obviously comply with that constitutional principle ourselves. [Emphasis added]
The following week, Mexico’s Ambassador to the United States, Esteban Moctezuma Barragan, also denied Schweizer’s reporting on CBS News’s The Takeout with Major Garrett.
“It’s completely false because, as you know, we follow the Vienna Convention, that has very clear… laws for every country,” Moctezuma said. “What we do in the United States is what the U.S. does in Mexico. You have nine consulates for 1.6 million Americans that live in Mexico.”
Schweizer’s The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and is available to purchase here.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com.
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