Tag: the war on (some) drugs

MS law enforcement officers, deputies indicted in drug conspiracy

Twenty people, including more than a dozen former or current Mississippi law enforcement officers and deputies, were charged in connection with a drug trafficking conspiracy on Thursday, according to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Mississippi.

According to court documents, Brandon Addison, Javery Howard, Milton Gaston, Truron Grayson, Bruce Williams, Sean Williams, Dexture Franklin, Wendell Johnson, Marcus Nolan, Aasahn Roach, Jeremy Sallis, Torio Chaz Wiseman, Pierre Lakes, Derrik Wallace, Marquivious Bankhead, Chaka Gaines, Martavis Moore, Jamario Sanford, Marvin Flowers, and Dequarian Smith are all charged with drug distribution.

The indictment showed that several defendants included in the indictment had local addresses, including one with a Southaven address, three in Memphis, and one in Horn Lake.

They said that 14 of these people were Mississippi local law enforcement officials. Two were Mississippi Sheriffs: Milton Gaston of Washington County and Bruce Williams of Humphreys County. And 12 are officers.

The attorney’s office said that if they are convicted, a federal district court judge will determine the sentence.

According to court documents, the defendants were employed by an FBI member who posed as a member of a Mexican drug cartel to protect the transportation of drugs through the Mississippi Delta counties along Highway 61 and would eventually go into Memphis.

“I think you can probably characterize this as a sting, but again the original complaints that began the investigation were from drug dealers,” said Clay Joiner, United States Attorney of Northern District of Mississippi.

Drug dealers, who officials said complained about having to pay bribes. The highest was more than $30,000.

Officials said each defendant thought they were transporting 25 kilograms of cocaine or other drugs.  

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Pentagon Tells Congress It Doesn’t Know Who It’s Killing in Latin American Boat Strikes

US War Department officials don’t know the identities of the 61 people who have been extra-judicially executed in US military strikes on boats in the waters near Venezuela and in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, POLITICO reported on Thursday, citing House Democrats who attended a classified briefing on the campaign.

“[The department officials] said that they do not need to positively identify individuals on these vessels to do the strikes, they just need to prove a connection to smuggling,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA). “When we tried to get more information, we did not get satisfactory answers.”

While the Trump administration has cited overdose deaths in the US related to fentanyl to justify the bombing campaign, lawmakers were told in the briefing that the boats that have been targeted were allegedly smuggling cocaine, though the Pentagon has not provided evidence to back up its claims about what the vessels were carrying.

“They argued that cocaine is a facilitating drug of fentanyl, but that was not a satisfactory answer for most of us,” Jacobs said.

The briefing on Thursday came after the Pentagon shut out Democrats from another briefing it held with Republicans a day earlier, which left Democratic senators fuming. Democrats who attended Thursday’s briefing said Pentagon lawyers were pulled from the meeting at the last minute.

“Am I leaving satisfied? Absolutely not. And the last word that I gave to the admiral was, ‘I hope you recognize the constitutional peril that you are in and the peril you are putting our troops in,’” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) told reporters after the briefing, according to CNN.

Jacobs said that, based on what she was told, even if Congress authorized the bombing campaign, it would still be illegal. “[T]here’s nothing that we heard in there that changes my assessment that this is completely illegal, that it is unlawful and even if Congress authorized it, it would still be illegal because there are extrajudicial killings where we have no evidence,” she said.

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The War on (Some) Drugs: Why Are We Still Talking About This?

Prohibition is an awful flop.
We like it.
It can’t stop what it’s meant to stop.
We like it.
It’s left a trail of graft and slime,
It don’t prohibit worth a dime,
It’s filled our land with vice and crime,
Nevertheless, we’re for it.

— “Prohibition” by Franklin P. Adams, 1931.

William Stewart Halsted is known as the “father of modern surgery.” He was one of the four founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1886, and he is credited with surgical innovations including promoting antiseptic practices and the discovery that cocaine, when injected into the skin, could be used as a local anesthetic. He was also a drug addict.

Halsted’s drug use began with cocaine, and after a few failed attempts at kicking the habit, he switched to morphine. He spent more than 40 years addicted to the drug, all while maintaining one of the most distinguished careers in the history of surgery. According to Sir William Osler, one of the co-founders of Johns Hopkins, Halsted could not get through the day without a minimum of 180 milligrams of morphine. “On this,” said Osler, “he could do his work comfortably, and maintain his physical vigor.”

Halsted’s story illustrates the reality that—while perhaps not desirable—it is possible to both be addicted to narcotics and still function very well in society. Imagine if America had been in the throes of the War on (Some) Drugs in the 19th century, and instead of doing groundbreaking work as a surgeon and helping to build one of the country’s most prestigious hospitals, Halsted had been thrown into a prison cell. Who would have benefited from that outcome?

More to the point: How many Halsteds are rotting away in prison today, and what gifts are we all missing out on as a result?

In Halsted’s day, drug addiction looked very different from what it looks like today. Federal control of narcotics only came about in 1914, with the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act.

Before that, anyone could walk into a drug store and purchase medicines—and even soft drinks—that contained opium or cocaine. And some did become addicted.

But, as Mike Gray writes in Drug Crazy:

“It was not until the late 1800s that the public began to realize that some of their favorite medicines could be highly addictive. … At that time, the highest credible estimates put the number of U.S. addicts at about three people in a thousand. Others thought it was half that.” (Note: Some estimates put the number as high as one in two hundred.)

“All the leading authorities now agree,” he writes, “that addiction peaked around 1900, followed by a steady drop. The reason was simple common sense coupled with growing awareness.”

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MAJOR FAFO: DOJ Announces Federal Charges Against 10 Anti-ICE Protestors Who Ambushed Law Enforcement During Raid on California Pot Farm

The Justice Department on Wednesday announced federal charges against 10 anti-ICE protestors who ambushed law enforcement officers during a raid on a California pot farm over the summer.

Federal agents descended on two marijuana farms in Ventura County owned Glass House Farms located in Camarillo and Carpinteria in Southern California over the summer.

According to reports, anti-ICE protestors were tipped off to the raid after federal agents obtained a search warrant on the marijuana farm.

Amid the chaos, a protestor was caught on video shooting at federal agents. No one was struck by the gunfire.

The anti-ICE rioter who fired shots at federal agents is still at large.

Per the DOJ:

Law enforcement has arrested a total of 10 defendants federally charged in three criminal complaints with engaging in violence and civil disorder against law enforcement officers and property during immigration enforcement actions in Southern California earlier this year, the Justice Department announced today.

Ten defendants are in federal custody. One defendant is in state custody and is expected to be handed over to federal authorities. One defendant is a fugitive. All 12 defendants are charged with federal crimes alleging they committed violence against law enforcement authorities and property.

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Aide to Mass Gov. Healey charged in cocaine trafficking scheme allegedly linked to state office building

An aide to Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy was arrested for cocaine trafficking after investigators intercepted packages with the drug slated to be delivered to a state office building where he worked, prosecutors said. 

LaMar Cook, 45, of Springfield, pleaded not guilty during his arraignment Wednesday and was ordered held without bail pending a court hearing, Boston.com reported. 

In addition to the drug charge, Cook is also charged with illegally owning a firearm and ammunition. 

Cook served as deputy director of Healey’s Western Massachusetts office, according to an archived staff directory. A spokesperson for the governor’s office said state officials fired Cook “effectively immediately” after learning of his arrest Tuesday, Boston.com reported. 

“The conduct that occurred here is unacceptable and represents a major breach of the public trust,” the spokesperson said. “This criminal investigation is ongoing, and our administration will work with law enforcement to assist them in their work.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to Healy’s office. 

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New Information on Biden White House Cocaine Scandal Revealed

New information about the Biden White House cocaine scandal was revealed this week.

A baggy of cocaine was discovered in the West Wing after Hunter Biden visited the White House in early July 2023.

The Secret Service closed its investigation into the Biden White House cocaine scandal without conducting any interviews.

No suspect was identified.

According to CNN, the baggy of cocaine was “found in a blind spot for surveillance cameras.”

The White House initially said there were no fingerprints, DNA samples, or leads.

However, it was later revealed that there was a partial DNA hit and then-Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle tried to make it disappear (the cocaine was ultimately destroyed).

The Secret Service also tied promotions to what people knew about the cocaine scandal.

Dan Bongino previously revealed that there were promotions handed out to a number of people to silence them about what they know about the efforts to make the cocaine evidence go away.

On Tuesday, RealClearPolitics reporter Susan Crabtree reported that a Secret Service Agent was actually placed on administrative leave for creating cocaine commemorative coins as an act of rebellion to the leadership’s cover-up.

The officer created coins that read, “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”

“The Secret Service Uniformed Division officers who guard the White House were so pissed off that they were forced to be part of a cocaine cover-up in 2023, as several Secret Service sources referred to it, that one officer made a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” commemorative challenge coin about the ordeal to lighten the mood and improve morale within the ranks, according to the photos below and several Secret Service sources,” Susan Crabtree reported.

“The officer was punished (placed on administrative leave for an unknown amount of time) for making and distributing the unauthorized coin. The coin’s distribution took place within weeks of the USSS closing the case in 11 days,” she said.

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US Military Officials Involved in Latin America Campaign Required To Sign Non-Disclosure Agreements

US military officials involved in the Trump administration’s military campaign in Latin America have been asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing US officials.

The report said the request is highly unusual, since US military officials are already required to keep secrets from the public, though it also acknowledged that the Pentagon has previously used NDAs under the leadership of War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The news comes as members of Congress have complained about the Trump administration’s lack of transparency about the campaign, which has involved bombing alleged drug-running boats and a substantial military buildup, and a push toward a regime change war to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The US War Department has not provided any evidence to back up its claims about what the boats it has been bombing are carrying and hasn’t provided any information about the people it has been killing in strikes that amount to extrajudicial executions at sea.

In an interview on Sunday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has been very critical of the bombing campaign, affirmed that Congress hasn’t received any information about the people the Pentagon has been targeting. “No one said their name. No one said what evidence. No one said whether they’re armed. And we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said. “So, at this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings.”

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Sen. Rand Paul Slams Strikes on Boats in Caribbean as ‘Extrajudicial Killings’

Senator Rand Paul blasted President Donald Trump’s strikes on alleged drug traffickers as unconstitutional and illegal. 

“A briefing is not enough to overcome the Constitution. The Constitution says that when you go to war, Congress has to vote on it. … The drug war, or the crime war, has typically been dealt with through law enforcement,” Paul said on Fox News Sunday. “And so far they have alleged that these people are drug dealers … and we’ve had no evidence presented. So at this point we would call them extrajudicial killings.” 

So far, the Department of War has bombed ten boats it claims are smuggling narcotics into the US. Nine of the strikes have been on vessels in the Caribbean, against alleged cartels linked to Venezuela. The White House has not provided evidence that the ships were carrying drugs. 

“So far, they have alleged that these people are drug dealers. No one said their name. No one said what evidence. No one said whether they’re armed. And we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said.

One survivor of a strike was released by Ecuador, finding he was not engaged in wrongdoing when the boat was attacked. One family member said a victim of a US strike was a fisherman, and not working for a cartel. 

Trump has discussed expanding the strikes into Venezuela and has given the CIA approval to conduct lethal operations against cartels. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims that Venezuelan President Maduro is the leader of a cartel designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. 

If Trump elects to expand the war, he told reporters that he will brief Congress on the plans. He went on to say he did not have to discuss the matter with the Legislator and has not sought a Declaration of War. 

The Constitution explicitly grants Congress the authority to Declare War. However, the principle of preventing the President from unilaterally declaring war has been eroded over time. Congress has not declared war since World War 2 II. The last Authorization for Use of Military Force was passed in 2002 for the Iraq War. 

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Hegseth Announces 14 Killed In New, Largest Single Attack On ‘Narco-Terrorist’ Boats

Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth has announced yet more strikes on alleged drug vessels operating off South America, in what’s becoming a weekly thing. This latest strike involved four total boats – in what looks to be the largest single set of strikes yet.

Unlike most of the some nine strikes recorded thus far, these fresh attacks were on the Pacific side of Latin America, and not directly off Venezuela’s coast. There’s been only one other prior instance, announced earlier this month, of such operations on the Pacific side.

The attacks against several vessels occurred Monday. Hegseth disclosed on Tuesday, “Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out three lethal kinetic strikes on four vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations (DTO) trafficking narcotics in the Eastern Pacific.”

“The four vessels were known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth continued.

The death toll was high in comparison with other attacks which stretch back several weeks. Hegseth continues in his statement on X:

Eight male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessels during the first strike. Four male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the second strike. Three male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the third strike. A total of 14 narco-terrorists were killed during the three strikes, with one survivor.

All strikes were in international waters with no U.S. forces harmed. Regarding the survivor, USSOUTHCOM immediately initiated Search and Rescue (SAR) standard protocols; Mexican SAR authorities accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue. 

This note about cooperation from Mexican authorities is interesting, and shows that not all regional governments are against the heightened Pentagon action off their shores – or else they are simply too scared of the Trump administration to say ‘no’.

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US Officials Disagree With Trump on Venezuela

In the waters of the Caribbean, a surprisingly large U.S. fleet sits with Venezuela in its sights. It includes over 10,000 troops, Aegis guided-missile destroyers, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, F-35B jet fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, P-8 Poseidon spy planes, assault ships and a secretive special-operations ship.

The fleet is built for war on Venezuela or its drug cartels, but it is engineered to put enough pressure on Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro to push him from power. The justification for the war is stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S. by Venezuelan drug cartels; the justification for the coup is that Maduro is the head of those cartels.

But U.S. officials – often those in the best place to know – have disagreed with all three aspects of the military action: the significance of Venezuela’s drug cartels in the flow of drugs, and especially fentanyl, into United States; the role of Maduro in those cartels; and the use of the military to fight them. For their disagreement, many of those officials have left or been forced from their jobs.

U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted that military force is necessary to stop “narco-terrorists” who are smuggling a “deadly weapon poisoning Americans. He has claimed that “every boat,” the U.S. military strikes off the coast of Venezuela is “stacked up with bags of white powder that’s mostly fentanyl” and “kills 25,000 on average – some people say more.”

But current and former U.S. officials disagree. While most of the boats the U.S. military has sunk have been in the passageway between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, U.S. officials say that that passage is neither used to transport fentanyl nor is it used to transport drugs to the United States. 80% of the drugs that flow through that passage is marijuana, and most of the rest is cocaine. And those drugs are headed, not to the U.S., but to West Africa and Europe. Most of the fentanyl that finds its way into the U.S. comes from Mexico.

The military strikes on Venezuelan boats cannot be justified by the war on drugs and “are unlikely… to cut overdose deaths in the United States,” according to officials. “When I saw [an internal document on the strikes],” a senior U.S. national security official said, “I immediately thought, ‘This isn’t about terrorists. This is about Venezuela and regime change’.”

According to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 90% of the cocaine that transits into the U.S. enters through Mexico, not Venezuela. And Venezuela is not a source of fentanyl. The dissenting American officials are in agreement with international bodies. The  2025 UNODC World Drug Report assesses that Venezuela “has consolidated its status as a territory free from the cultivation of coca leaves, cannabis and similar crops.” The report says that “[o]nly 5% of Colombian drugs transit through Venezuela.” The EU’s European Drug Report 2025 corroborates the UN report: it “does not mention Venezuela even once as a corridor for the international drug trade.”

U.S. intelligence also disagrees on the Trump administration’s claim that Maduro is at the head of the Venezuelan drug cartels. The Trump administration has insisted that “Maduro is the leader of the designated narco-terrorist organization Cartel de Los Soles.”

Again, though, U.S. officials disagree. A “sense of the community” memorandum dated April 7, 2025 that puts together the findings of the 18 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence directly contradicts the Trump administration’s claim that Maduro is the leader of Tren de Aragua (TDA) drug cartel.

The memorandum clearly states that “the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.” It states that the intelligence community “has not observed the regime directing TDA.”

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