True to form for Trump Administration, Drug Enforcement Administration Lies Big

[crazyfingers]

Boston Globe Spotlight Investigation

Some time ago the DEA announced and it got plastered around the news of a New England drug cartel bust rounding up 171 high muck-a-mucks of the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel. But it's not true.

Boston Globe Investigation

FRANKLIN, N.H. — President Trump’s escalating war against Latin American drug cartels crashed into this leafy old mill town with surprising force one morning in late August, when heavily armed federal agents and local police kicked off a series of raids by tossing a flash-bang grenade and bashing in a door.

The show of force was followed by an announcement from federal authorities that, in coordinated raids across New England, they had seized more than 500 pounds of drugs and captured nearly 200 members of Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa Cartel, the violent syndicate that supplies illegal drugs to the US.

The special agent in charge of the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s New England division, Jarod Forget, said the crackdown “led to 171 cartel member arrests” across the region, including 27 in Franklin. The DEA didn’t name any of the suspects, but Forget described them as “high-level arrests” that were part of a national sweep that netted more than 600 operatives of the feared organization over five days.

“We’re the DEA,” Forget told an interviewer at the time. “We’re not going after low-level retail drug traffickers.”

Except that isn’t true.

A Globe Spotlight Team investigation found that many of the DEA’s targets in New England were precisely the people Forget said they were not: addicts, low-level dealers, shoplifters, and people living at a homeless encampment.

Reporters contacted more than 75 state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies; sifted through more than 1,650 pages of court records; filed more than four dozen public-records requests; knocked on dozens of doors; and conducted scores of interviews.

The evidence made clear that the government misrepresented the stature of its targets in New England at a time when the Trump administration was seeking to justify deadly strikes on alleged cartel boats in the Caribbean Sea.

“I can guarantee that he’s not part of the Sinaloa Cartel,” Scott Alati said of his son, Tyler, who was charged in state court in Franklin with a felony-level drug sale and immediately released without having to post bail. “He isn’t a high-ranking member of anything. He’s high-ranking dumb.”

Not sure if this link will work or not

The DEA said it arrested 171 ‘high ranking’ Sinaloa Cartel members. A Spotlight investigation found that’s not true. - The Boston Globe

A Globe investigation found that the federal agency misrepresented the stature of its targets, claiming cartel ties at a time when the Trump administration is taking lethal military action against such groups.

www.bostonglobe.com

 

[ZiprHead]

I want to know what happened to the Antifa leader's girlfriend.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Jebus, had Biden, Clinton, HW Bush, Reagan tried to get away with this, it'd be a scandal.

Today, it is truth that the Trump DEA did something that they didn't actually do.

 

[Jarhyn]

Jebus, had Biden, Clinton, HW Bush, Reagan tried to get away with this, it'd be a scandal.

Today, it is truth that the Trump DEA did something that they didn't actually do.

They DID actually arrest a number of homeless drifters, and CLAIM that they were cartel members.

It's clear the administration is testing waters at the use of bad faith and propaganda to target and enact arrests.

I think we are already in the midst of arrests of protestors as "terrorists".

I recall the mask-off Nazi chat had people going on about gassing people for voting "liberal" or whatever.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

And they're just lying about the "drug boats".

Pentagon Admits It Has No Idea Who’s on “Drug Boats” Being Bombed

A Democratic lawmaker revealed the shocking detail after a Pentagon briefing for members of Congress.

newrepublic.com

Speaking to CNN Thursday, Democratic Representative Sara Jacobs said she was told in a Pentagon briefing “that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes” and that was part of the reason why the administration has not sought to detain or prosecute the survivors of the strikes, “because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden.”

Of course yet another atrocity that will be ignored by the right. Instead they'll be whining about pronouns.

 

[Shadowy Man]

And they're just lying about the "drug boats".

Pentagon Admits It Has No Idea Who’s on “Drug Boats” Being Bombed

A Democratic lawmaker revealed the shocking detail after a Pentagon briefing for members of Congress.

newrepublic.com

Speaking to CNN Thursday, Democratic Representative Sara Jacobs said she was told in a Pentagon briefing “that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes” and that was part of the reason why the administration has not sought to detain or prosecute the survivors of the strikes, “because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden.”

Of course yet another atrocity that will be ignored by the right. Instead they'll be whining about pronouns.

I guess if you don’t know who is on the boats you don’t have to know their pronouns.

 

[ideologyhunter]

WH Briefing Room....5/13/2026

Kristi Noem: A short statement, and then a limited number of questions. The Department of War has announced that earlier today, elements of our elite strike force took out a drug boat off the coast of Guyana. There were no survivors. The boat was carrying fentanyl, cocaine, and other illegal substances. As President Trump says, if you try to bring drugs into America, we will kill you. You'll be dead. In the case of these criminals, they ended up as sushi for the fish. A few questions. UPI?
UPI: Secretary Noem, the Vatican is reporting that the papal excursion yacht, which was out in the Atlantic about 15 miles off Guyana, is reported missing. Did --
Noem: We did not put a round through the Pope. I've seen the footage. We had facial ID technology in play, and the figure at the prow of the boat was ID'd definitively as Leo Sanctus, which is a name on the MS-13 list of bad actors. The President received imaging straight from the drone, and he could read the name of the boat, which was Fentanyl II, which is a direct provocation. These folks were asking to be shot.
UPI: A follow up? Sanctus is Latin for "holy" or "holiness". The Pope's boat is the Fatima II. Was the President able to read clearly what the name of the boat was?
Noem: Not only could he read the name of the boat, he saw a bong on the deck of the boat which was wafting drug fumes into the open air.
CBS: Could the President have mistaken a censer for a bong?
Noem: If it looks like a bong, gives off fumes like a bong, and it's the right size and shape of a bong, it's a bong. May I remind you that you folks paid sixteen MILLION dollars to the President last year, because you can't tell the truth?
WSJ: But if the Pope remains missing --
Noem: If the Pope remains missing, then clearly his boat got too close to the smugglers' boat, and they killed the Pope and sank his boat. So this President actually punished the Pope killers, as he has avenged the killers of three other Popes, which is more than any other President in our history.
WSJ: Who were the other Popes that were murdered in his term?
Noem: That is the last question. Thank you.