Remember Obama Attorney General Eric Holder’s Fast and Furious scandal? The Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco (ATF) allowed over 2,000 firearms to be purchased illegally in 2009 so they could track them and tie them to Mexican drug cartels. What could go wrong?
Turns out, a lot.
They promptly lost track of the guns, and then one of them was used in the killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Holder was eventually held in contempt of Congress for refusing to come clean on the matter, but even he admitted that the tactics were “wholly unacceptable.”
Some Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents didn’t get the memo, however, according to a new Associated Press report that alleges the agency allowed hundreds of thousands of deadly fentanyl pills to flood New Mexico between 2023 and 2025. Instead of stopping the flow, they stood by and waited for bigger fish to fry (emphasis theirs):
DEA agents repeatedly monitored shipments of fentanyl pills — but did not seize them — as federal prosecutors sought to bring bigger criminal cases against major drug traffickers. Agents and experts, however, said the tactic amounted to a gamble with public safety. “We poisoned our community to make cases,” whistleblower DEA Special Agent David Howell told AP in a series of interviews in New Mexico.
As @ChuckGrassley’s lead line attorney to investigate Operation Fast and Furious, I can say the Biden Administration’s fentanyl Fast and Furious is just as big of a scandal. @EMPOWR_us is proud to represent Special Agent David Howell, and we hope Congress and the @JusticeOIG will… https://t.co/EP0J16HJyE pic.twitter.com/1kOGG0zxXT
— Tristan Leavitt (@tristanleavitt) June 22, 2026
As @ChuckGrassley’s lead line attorney to investigate Operation Fast and Furious, I can say the Biden Administration’s fentanyl Fast and Furious is just as big of a scandal. @EMPOWR_us is proud to represent Special Agent David Howell, and we hope Congress and the @JusticeOIG will do the work to expose the precise staggering amount of just many pills were really walked.
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Massive US-Mexico Border Tunnel Discovered Hidden in Plain Sight
In an interview, Jim Mustian, one of the two reporters who broke the story, detailed how they tracked down the whistleblower using some smart investigative tactics. They noticed that all but one letter of the whistleblower's name was redacted in a report. It was the letter “L,” so they sent messages via LinkedIn to every DEA agent they could find whose name ended in that letter. They struck gold, and an agent soon connected to the whistleblower, named David Howell.
How we identified @DEAHQ whistleblower David Howell. The government left a single letter of his name unredacted in this filing https://t.co/Y58KR59LyV pic.twitter.com/D1D8r8SqXM
— Jim Mustian (@JimMustian) June 22, 2026
Since the government often allows smaller-scale criminal activities to proceed so they can uncover larger-scale operations, Mustian was asked why this was different. It’s because by releasing it, you’re almost certainly condemning people to death, he explained:
The simple answer: the sheer potency and lethality of fentanyl. In its “One Pill Can Kill” campaign, the DEA warns that just a couple of milligrams — an amount that would fit on the tip of a pencil — is enough to kill the average adult. Nowadays with fentanyl, we’re usually talking about counterfeit pills designed to mimic name-brand painkillers. The pills are almost always manufactured by cartels in Mexican labs and contain an unknown amount of fentanyl.
The DEA is denying the allegations and said in an email, “public descriptions suggesting that DEA knowingly permitted fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts.”
While I mostly don’t trust the Associated Press further than I can throw them, this doesn’t seem to be another anti-Trump hit piece, since most of the alleged activity occurred during the Biden years. I suspect we’ll hear more about this story, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see congressional hearings. Law enforcement investigations are inherently complicated, but (allegedly) allowing large quantities of deadly drugs to hit the streets simply does not sound like an optimum plan.
Editor’s Note: The American people overwhelmingly support President Trump’s law and order agenda.
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