‘Death Knell’: Biden DOJ Retaliated Against DEA Agent Who Tried to Stop Flood of Fentanyl, Attorney Says

The Biden Justice Department retaliated against the Drug Enforcement Administration agent who exposed an operation allowing hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to enter the United States, the whistleblower’s lawyer said.

DEA Special Agent David Howell, working in New Mexico, objected to the process of allowing the highly lethal drug to enter the country, arguing that the Justice Department’s goal was to trace the drugs to large drug trafficking organizations for high-profile arrests.

“The U.S. attorney’s office became more and more upset with his making these disclosures, and ultimately they told the DEA in New Mexico they would no longer work with Special Agent Howell,” Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight, a whistleblower advocacy group, told the Daily Signal. “They refused to take any of his cases, and for a federal agent that’s really kind of a death knell to your career.”

The Office of Special Counsel, a watchdog agency within the Justice Department, has found in past cases that refusing to work with someone qualifies as retaliation, Leavitt explained.

The fentanyl operation has drawn comparisons to “Operation Fast and Furious,” a Justice Department gunwalking scandal that occurred during the Obama administration.

Leavitt said that early on, Howell began piecing together that the U.S. attorney’s office was focused on something other than seizures of illegal drugs.

“Special Agent Howell and his partner seized that fentanyl and really got chastised by the U.S. attorney’s office,” Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight, a whistleblower advocacy group, told the Daily Signal.

“After that initial conversation, Special Agent Howell started looking closer at what was behind this from the U.S. attorney’s office and started to realize that other cases also were instances where the U.S. attorney’s office was directing that fentanyl not be seized,” Leavitt added. “He started to see a pattern, and that’s what led him to both speak up to the U.S. attorney’s office but also to prepare to file whistleblower complaints.”

He took his complaint to the Office of Special Counsel in November 2023.

Former U.S. Attorney Alex Uballez of New Mexico, whom President Joe Biden nominated in 2022, oversaw and defended the program. He told the Associated Press, “The bigger fish are worth catching,” referring to the goal of monitoring fentanyl trafficking to eventually apprehend higher-ranking figures at the cartels. Uballez also said, “That will save more lives.”

Powell and other critics of the operation contend that fentanyl is too lethal of a drug to be allowed into the U.S.

After Howell raised his objections with the Justice Department, Leavitt said he wasn’t able “to do normal DEA work,” was detailed to other agencies, and went through “a series of makeshift work assignments to get around the fact that he couldn’t do his normal work as an officer.” He was not allowed to testify in a case at trial or even to have a case of his brought by the U.S. attorney’s office, Leavitt said.

In September 2024, the Office of Special Counsel and Office of Professional Responsibility returned their report; Leavitt said it did not address the core of his complaint. Nevertheless, Howell still thought the matter might gain public interest.

He recalled the gunwalking program that occurred during the Obama administration known as “Operation Fast and Furious,” when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed firearms to flow into Mexico with the intent of tracing them to a Mexican drug trafficking organization. The ATF lost track of the guns, two of which were found at the scene of the 2010 fatal shooting of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

The whistleblower saw parallels between the two cases.

“Special Agent Howell reached out to John Dodson, the original ATF whistleblower in Fast and Furious, and through him got in touch with us,” Leavitt said. “And that’s how we first learned David’s story and decided to start representing him.”

The Justice Department in Washington, the U.S. attorney’s office in New Mexico, and the DEA did not respond to specific questions for this story before publication.

Last month, DEA Administrator Terry Cole asked the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General to investigate the matter.

“The alleged conduct occurred under the Biden administration’s disastrous open border policies,” a Justice Department spokesperson told the Daily Signal last month. “The Trump administration has closed the border and is aggressively pursuing drug traffickers. DEA Administrator Cole has requested an independent DOJ-OIG review of DEA’s actions in light of this reporting to reaffirm the public’s confidence in our law enforcement agencies. Should that review identify areas of improvement, the DEA will of course implement changes to better their practices.”