By MARK LORENZANA
José Ramón López Beltrán, eldest son of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), warned Senator Xóchitl Gálvez of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) that he would take legal action against the legislator for “invading the property of others” and “not respecting” his “right to privacy.”
“I reserve the right to take any legal action against you (Gálvez). I will not put the privacy and life of my family at risk,” López Beltrán wrote on his Twitter account.
On Monday, Aug. 8, López Beltrán accused both Gálvez and Televisa journalist Denise Maerker and her team of going to Houston, Texas, with the intention of recording videos and taking photos of the so-called Gray House, a mansion where AMLO’s eldest son stayed for a year.
“It seems that they do not want to stop bothering me with the same thing,” López Beltrán said, again, through his Twitter account.
The mansion López Beltrán was referring to is a million-dollar property where he resided for a year, and which is owned by a senior executive of the Baker Hughes company, a U.S. oil service firm doing business with Mexican state-owned oil giant Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex). The Houston Chronicle had referred to the controversy in an article on March 7 of this year as “Houstongate.”
Gálvez, in his own Twitter post, replied to López Beltrán’s accusations.
“Yes, I was outside the #CasaGris. I take responsibility for my actions, unlike you,” wrote the legislator. “Have guts and admit that you were involved in a conflict of interest by living in the house of a senior executive of #BakerHughes, a company that maintains million-dollar contracts with Pemex. Stop painting yourself as the victim.”
Maerker also replied to López Beltrán via Twitter.
“I don’t know who is recording you, José Ramón. Because neither I, nor my team are — nor have we been — in Houston. Cheers,” wrote the Televisa news anchor.
López Beltrán has likewise showcased his seemingly onion-skinned demeanor recently. He has complained on social media about people taking pictures of him and his family while on a beach trip in Acapulco and while having dinner in a restaurant in Sinaloa, accusing those who snapped the photographs of being “racist” and “classist.”