Attorney General Gertz resigns after nearly 7 scandal-filled years on the job

Mexico’s controversial attorney general, Alejandro Gertz Manero, resigned on Thursday and has been replaced on an interim basis by President Claudia Sheinbaum’s legal adviser,  Ernestina Godoy.

In a Senate session, presiding officers read a letter by Gertz requesting that his resignation be accepted after Sheinbaum nominated him as “Mexico’s ambassador to a friendly country,” which was later revealed to be Germany.

Gertz, who had served as attorney general since January 2019, was appointed for a nine-year term, but his office has increasingly come under scrutiny for leaks involving sensitive case files and other missteps. He has also faced accusations that he used his position for personal and political gain.

The Senate approved his resignation 74 to 22, with no abstentions. 

Immediately after the vote to accept the resignation, the Senate established procedures to appoint Mexico’s new top prosecutor and sent out a call for applications.

Sheinbaum will submit three candidates to the Senate, which will select a successor via a two-thirds majority vote.

Godoy, who served as Mexico City Attorney General when Sheinbaum was the mayor of the capital, is considered the favorite to serve out the remainder of Gertz’s term.

Controversy in the Senate

Opposition senators objected to Gertz’s removal, arguing that his resignation did not meet the terms established in Article 24 of the Constitution, which stipulates that the attorney general is only permitted to resign for “serious cause.”

Movimiento Ciudadano party Senator Clemente Castañeda, among others, argued that accepting an ambassadorial nomination is not “a serious cause,” insisting that physical and mental incapacity to continue serving as a prosecutor, having committed an administrative offense or a crime, or violating the Constitution were acceptable reasons to abdicate the office.

Institutional Revolutionary Party Senator Manuel Añorve charged Sheinbaum and the ruling Morena party with nefarious politics. 

“This isn’t a resignation, it’s a power grab,” he said. “What we’re seeing is a prosecutor resigning to make way for a puppet prosecutor.”

Morena senators insisted that the resignation did comply with Article 24, claiming that Gertz had violated the Constitution by failing to submit reports he is obligated to provide to Congress.

However, opposition senators said they were not privy to the resignation letter nor were they permitted to review the document sent to President Sheinbaum by Senate leadership on Wednesday advising her of the upcoming vote.

Afterward, Morena’s caucus leader in the Senate, Adán Augusto López, dismissed the accusations that he had orchestrated Gertz’s ouster, saying “media outlets were letting their imaginations run wild.”  

López did not address the claims that Gertz had violated the Constitution, instead saying the resignation letter itself was reason enough to accept his departure.

“If someone holds a position of responsibility and says ‘I am retiring,’ that rises to the level of ‘a serious cause,’ because he is essentially abandoning his post,” López said.

Gertz’s past controversies

The resignation of the 86-year-old Gertz had been the subject of speculation amid what the news agency Reuters called, “scrutiny of Sheinbaum’s government over security issues,” especially as rumors about Mexico’s World Cup hosting duties made headlines.

Critics also argued that Gertz used his enormous influence to settle personal vendettas and protect alleged business interests.

Earlier this week, El Universal columnist Mario Maldonado attributed the effort to oust Gertz to repeated leaks of sensitive files that implicated former high-ranking government officials and members of the Navy as well as members of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s inner circle.

In 2022, Gertz was heavily criticized for trumping up charges against his in-laws who languished in prison for nearly 22 months. The Supreme Court bluntly rebuked the attorney general while ruling his efforts unconstitutional.

He also tried to lock up 31 academics on charges they improperly received about US $2.5 million in government science funding. The laws at the time allowed such funding, and the money was determined to have been spent properly. Gertz allegedly sought to jail the academics because they had declined to approve his request for formal recognition as a leading academic.

Gertz also came under heavy fire for summarily clearing former Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos of drug charges after he had been arrested in Los Angeles in 2020, claiming U.S. authorities had no evidence. Mexico then drew the ire of the U.S. government by releasing the entire case file in violation of a bilateral treaty.

With reports from Reforma, La Jornada, El Universal, Reuters, The Associated Press, El País and Infobae