DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart has received a vote of "no confidence" from members of the House Oversight and Government Reforms Committee. Leonhart has stood idly by as her agents have run berserk, murdering and torturing innocent people, spying on Americans, fabricating evidence, participating in sex parties funded by Colombian drug cartels, ignoring science, and doing other things you'd expect only from the worst kind of criminal syndicate.
Here's just a selection of the controversies surrounding the agency since she took over in 2008, or which involve her own long history with the agency:
- The Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General currently has six open investigations into numerous DEA scandals, including the massacre of civilians in Honduras, the use of NSA data to both spy on virtually all Americans and to systematically fabricate evidence, and controversial uses of confidential informants.
- Leonhart herself has been at the center of several scandals, including the House of Death scandal in which the DEA may have turned a blind eye to torture and murder, and the Andrew Chambers scandal, in which the DEA rehired a confidential informant with a history of lying.
- DEA conflicts with Obama administration policy. Last year, Leonhart publicly rebuked President Obama for admitting that marijuana is as safe as alcohol, told members of Congress that the DEA will continue to go after marijuana even in states where it is legal despite DOJ guidance stating otherwise, and spoke out against bipartisan drug sentencing reform in Congress that the Obama administration is supporting.
- Last May, The DEA created a political firestorm this week when it seized seeds bound for a Kentucky hemp research program that was approved by Congress. Then Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called the incident "an outrage" and the Kentucky Agriculture Department sued the DEA.
- The DEA's refusal to acknowledge science. DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart has on several occasions ignored science and overruled the DEA's own administrative law judges on medical issues relating to marijuana.
Drug reformers, who have long criticized Leonhart's last-century attitudes and approach to drug policy, were calling for her head.
