Would it surprise you that a top Biden official is accused of doling out cushy, well-paying government jobs and contracts to her liberal friends?
No, probably not, but it is surprising that the Associated Press has temporarily shed its Democrat-Media Complex credentials and reported that the Department of Justice’s Inspector General is investigating Anne Milgram, President Joe Biden’s Drug and Enforcement Agency chief, for allegedly rewarding her cronies with no-bid contracts.
Milgram is the former attorney general of New Jersey and a former law professor. Now, the IG is looking at millions of dollars in taxpayers’ money allegedly given out for “strategic planning and communication” and other contracts to her friends. According to the AP, the pay for such contracts was given “at costs far exceeding pay for government officials.”
“Some of these deals look very swampy,” Scott Amey, general counsel of the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, told the AP.
Also included in the report is a $1.4 million payment made to the firm WilmerHale for an outside review of DEA foreign operations and how to prevent misconduct and reduce scandals. That review, the AP noted, was widely criticized for not being as thorough as it should have been. Who helped lead that review? Well, none other than former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s right-hand man, Boyd Johnson. Bharara, according to the media outlet, is a close friend of Milgram.
One of the other authors of the study was 87-year-old DEA veteran John Lawn, whose knowledge of foreign practices related mostly to the 1980s. Post-government employment, Lawn was in charge of a beverage industry group that funded an alcohol research study led by Milgram’s mother.
Adding to the swampiness is the fact that the typical government-bidding process was discarded. The DEA argued that the “threat of illicit foreign drugs to the health and safety of the American public has never been greater” and required “urgency ” to complete the review.
Instead, the review took nearly a year and a half to complete when it was supposed to take six months at most.
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One former DEA official, Matthew Donahue, described that review as “a complete waste of taxpayers’ money.” Donahue had led the DEA’s foreign operations unit but retired after he allegedly “butted heads” with Milgram, according to the AP.
“It’s something that could’ve been written in three days,” Donahue said of the finished product from WilmerHale. He also added that he and other key DEA officials and used publicly available information from press reports.
At least one lawmaker is now attempting to hold Milgram and the DEA accountable. According to the AP, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent Johnson a request for records and information regarding his relationship with the DEA chief.
“Though DEA originally billed this report as a ‘comprehensive review’ of DEA’s foreign operations strategy, the report glosses over or ignores serious shortcomings at the agency and spends much of its 49 pages quoting from publicly available documents that one could have pulled off a web site,” Grassley said.
He added that WilmerHale’s review was “stunningly vague.”
There are other potential scandals, too, documented in the AP’s story.
For many, this will come as no surprise that a federal bureaucrat with connections to New Jersey and New York Democrats might be involved in corruption. It’s just another day in The Swamp.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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