Puerto Rico’s federal and local lawmakers, as well as civil rights and advocacy groups, are calling for an investigation after ProPublica reported how a federal investigation into a voting drug program in Puerto Rico’s prisons was quashed after the 2024 election.
Territorial Congressman Pablo Jose Hernández Rivera on Tuesday called on members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee to join him in pushing for a Congressional investigation into the matter.
“The report ProPublica released today details facts that elected officials, whether in Puerto Rico or in Washington, cannot ignore,” he said in a statement in Spanish.
On the same day, Rep. Hector Ferrer Santiago, a member of the Popular Democratic Party, introduced a resolution in the territory’s lower house ordering the Public Safety Committee to investigate, calling the allegations “serious!” He said the House of Commons had an “inevitable duty to investigate.”
Their request came on a day when ProPublica released an investigation detailing how prosecutors busted a voting drug scheme run by gangs in Puerto Rico’s prisons, taking a deep dive into the current governor’s right and wrong. Jennifer Gonzalez Colon or her campaign was involved. As prosecutors were preparing the indictment in the days after the 2024 election of President Donald Trump, they were instructed by supervisors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico to exclude voting-related charges against inmates and prison staff, four people familiar with the investigation told ProPublica. Then, when President Trump took office, he was instructed to completely abandon any investigation into potential political ties, the people said.
Gonzalez Colon, a longtime Republican and member of the pro-national New Progressive Party, has declined repeated interview requests from ProPublica. In a statement Tuesday, she denied any wrongdoing and said she had “resolutely opposed corruption” throughout her career and political life.
“I categorically reject any attempt to link me to any illegal activity,” she wrote. González Colon has not been charged with any crime.
She told local news outlets on Wednesday that she did not believe any investigation into the matter was warranted. “There’s nothing here,” she said in Spanish. “And if they have the last four years of research, let them do it and successfully draw their conclusions. But I have absolutely no connection to the things pointed out there, much less my campaign.”
On Wednesday, leaders of the Puerto Rican Independence Party also called for an investigation. The party’s deputy leader, Sen. María de Lourdes Santiago, said on social media that the issue of partisan interference in prison spaces should not be ignored given its “serious implications.”
Tomas Rivera Schatz, president of Puerto Rico’s Senate and a member of Gonzalez Colon’s party, initially told local news outlets that Puerto Rican government officials should be thoroughly investigated. But in a press conference on Thursday, he walked back that claim, saying of ProPublica’s reporting, “I don’t give any credibility to this reporting…This reporting appears to be following a certain editorial line, which is directed against the Republican Party and against Trump.”
The indictment, filed in December 2024, when Joe Biden was still president, charged 34 members and associates of the gang known as Group 31, or Los Tiburones, with participating in crimes including drug distribution, money laundering and firearms possession that resulted in at least four overdose deaths. Prosecutors also alleged that the gang connected with government officials “for the purpose of reducing sentences” and mandated both prisoners’ political affiliations and “who they would vote for in the primary and general elections,” but the charges did not include charges related to a drug scheme for voting purposes.
Gang leaders forced inmates to vote for González Colon, or they were brutally beaten and had their drug supply cut off, according to people familiar with the investigation. Many inmates are addicted to illegal drugs. Prosecutors have evidence that González Colon spoke on WhatsApp with one of the prison gang leaders during the primary campaign and pursued other potential relationships despite being instructed not to investigate further, a person familiar with the investigation told ProPublica.
Gonzalez Colon said in a statement that he engaged with all sectors of society during the campaign. “This included meeting with families of incarcerated people who are concerned about reintegration and reintegration, because public policy must be inclusive and responsive to all communities,” she said. She did not address allegations that she had spoken directly to gang leaders.
W. Stephen Muldrow, the U.S. attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, who was appointed by President Trump in 2019 and has served continuously since then, told ProPublica that his office does not comment on unresolved cases. Several defendants in drug and money laundering cases have entered into plea deals, but most cases are still pending.
“Given the ongoing nature of the case and the importance of maintaining the integrity of the ongoing matter, it would not be appropriate for us to comment further in the press,” the office’s spokeswoman, Rymarie Lovett Ayala, said in an email Wednesday. He previously said that prosecuting corrupt officials “has always been and will continue to be a top priority” for government officials.
As Puerto Rico’s resident committee member in Congress (a role similar to a U.S. representative), Hernández Rivera has the power to introduce and co-sponsor bills and vote in committee, but is prohibited from voting on final passage of legislation in the House of Representatives.
Hernández Rivera, a Democrat with the People’s Democratic Party, said he is interested in starting an oversight process and is working on a draft letter requesting an investigation, which already has support from at least several members of the House Judiciary Committee.
Puerto Rico’s political parties are not strictly divided between Democrats and Republicans. Instead, they are focused on whether Puerto Rico should become a state, as are their respective internal Republicans and Democrats.
Hernández Rivera said the fact that the New Progressive Party has a strong hold on the prisoner vote is questionable. “When it comes to prisons in particular, it raises some eyebrows from a statistical standpoint, the fact that 83% of prisoners vote for the candidate of that party, when nowhere else in Puerto Rico votes by that margin,” he said, citing ProPublica’s tally of voter returns from the state Board of Elections website. By comparison, Gonzalez Colon won the five-way general election contest with 41% of the overall vote.
“The question here is more about whether the process was followed and whether there was corruption in abandoning the case,” Hernandez Rivera said.
Rep. Glenn Grossman (R-Wis.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, told ProPublica that he doesn’t yet know the details of the case but supports an investigation. He said the allegations were not surprising given the allegations of election fraud across the United States and “the morality of today.”
“I hope our committee or another committee does some kind of investigation,” he said.
Annette Martínez Orabona, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Puerto Rico, said abandoning the investigation into the prison voter fraud scheme would undermine the faith of people who believe in democracy.
The ACLU is “insisting on full transparency about what happened in this investigation, what evidence was collected, and what was done with that evidence,” Martinez Orabona said in a written statement.
The Power 4 Puerto Rico coalition, a splinter group advocating greater independence for the Puerto Rican territory, said it wanted answers from González Colón and the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Power 4 Puerto Rico is calling for a Congressional hearing to thoroughly examine what happened, who knew, and why the voting-related investigation did not move forward,” the group’s director, Erica Gonzalez Martínez, said in a statement. “Puerto Ricans have a right to know the truth.”
