DEA chief Anne Milgram accused of cronyism

The US Office of Inspector General has identified questionable funding practices by DEA Administrator Anne Milgram, a former NYU law professor, federal prosecutor, and New Jersey attorney general.

Milgram is accused of diverting no-bid DEA contracts into the hands of friends or former colleagues in violations of federal regulations. These included a $400,000 data analysis contract to Jose Cordero, a $257-per-hour consulting contract to Lena Hackett, and a $1.4 million contract to a Washington, DC law firm to “review the DEA’s scandal-plagued foreign operations, a report widely criticized for giving short shrift to repeat instances of agent misconduct.”

“This report is stunningly vague in its actual evaluation of known problems at the DEA and remedies to fix them,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “This speaks to the agency’s broader effort to evade oversight. The agency has attempted to dodge my oversight inquiries but I intend to push forward.”

The external probe was announced in 2021 following reporting by The Associated Press on the crimes of José Irizarry, a disgraced former DEA agent now serving a 12-year federal prison sentence after confessing to laundering money for Colombian drug cartels and skimming millions from seizures and informants to fund an international joyride of fine dining, parties and prostitutes.

Irizarry told the AP last year that DEA agents have come to accept that there’s nothing they can do to make a dent in the flow of illegal cocaine and opioids into the United States that has driven more than 100,000 overdose deaths a year.

“The drug war is a game,” Irizarry said. “It was a very fun game that we were playing.”

Irizarry’s case got one paragraph in the external review. An ongoing federal grand jury inquiry into some of his jet-setting former DEA colleagues was mentioned in a footnote. Also, Irizarry’s lawyer told AP he offered to make his client available for an interview for the review but was never contacted. […]

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One Response to DEA chief Anne Milgram accused of cronyism

  1. Son of Sam Walton says:

    DEA training manual relies on agents to utilize all their skills learned from playing Monopoly and Red Rover-Red Rover when conducting business. Of course, it has always been a game, and the cats don’t always just go after the mice. And many of these mice have flooded our borders, hiding in the midst of those Humans who came from south of the Rio just to hide from the cartel rats’ cruel control over Mexico and Central America.

    And those DEA chums did more to lose our War in Afghanistan than NASCAR driver Brandon. And they dumped their crap all over Iraq as well.

    Thank God this ol’ gal never had a baby with Dick Cheny.

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