The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has reportedly quietly expelled a top official from Mexico for alleged ties to Miami-based defense attorneys representing the accused drug traffickers.
Nicholas Palmeri served for only a 14-month period as Regional Director of the DEA’s North and Central America Region, based in Mexico City. He was abruptly transferred to the Washington headquarters in May 2021 before being forced to retire last March from the federal agency where he worked for more than two decades.
The Associated Press, citing confidential records, reported Friday that Palmeri’s socializing and vacations with Miami drug lawyers led to his ultimate downfall.
According to the AP, internal investigative records show that Miami defense attorney David Macey hosted Palmeri and his Mexican-born wife for two days at his home in the Florida Keys, a trip investigators say was not served a useful employment purpose and violated the rules governing interactions with attorneys. they are designed to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.
MEXICO CONFIRMS A US CITIZEN AMONG THE 4 DEAD IN ZACATECAS
A photo posted to Twitter by the DEA’s New York branch on August 30, 2019 shows Nicholas Palmeri. The US Drug Enforcement Administration quietly removed Palmeri, its top official in Mexico, in 2022 for inappropriate contact with drug lawyers, a shameful end to a brief tenure marked by deteriorating cooperation between the countries. and a record flow of cocaine, heroin and fentanyl across the country. border.
(DEA via AP)
Palmeri’s case adds to a growing litany of misconduct plaguing the country’s top narcotics law enforcement agency at a time when its sprawling foreign operations, spanning 69 countries, are under scrutiny from a external review ordered by DEA Administrator Anne Milgram.
That review came in response to the case of José Irizarry, a disgraced former agent now serving a 12-year federal prison sentence after confessing to laundering money for Colombian drug cartels and stealing millions of seizures to finance a trip. of international pleasure of the jet-setter, parties and prostitutes.
Palmeri’s is the second case in recent months to shed light on the often cozy interactions between DEA officials and Miami lawyers representing some of Latin America’s biggest drug traffickers and money launderers.
Last year, federal prosecutors charged a DEA agent and a former supervisor with leaking confidential law enforcement information to two unnamed Miami defense attorneys in exchange for $70,000 in cash. Current and former US officials identified one of those lawyers as Macey, the AP reported.
Palmeri, 52, acknowledged to investigators that he stayed at Macey’s rest home, that his wife worked as a translator for another prominent attorney, Rubén Oliva, and that he took an unauthorized trip to Miami with his wife in February 2021. The alleged purpose of the trip to Miami had been to “interrogate” a confidential source. But it took place at a private home where Palmeri appeared with his wife and a bottle of wine, according to the internal report.
Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Anne Milgram speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Cenata, File)
“The meeting had the appearance of a social interaction with a confidential source,” investigators wrote, “and there was no contemporaneous official documentation from the DEA of the contents of the report, both of which violate DEA policy.”
Palmeri told investigators that he had not shown “the best judgment” and was transferred to DC.
According to the AP, separate internal investigations raised other red flags, including complaints about lax handling of the coronavirus pandemic that resulted in two sick officers having to be flown out of the country. And another released last week found that Palmeri approved the use of anti-drug funds for inappropriate purposes and sought reimbursement to pay for her own birthday party.
This March 2020 photo provided by the US Border Patrol shows drugs seized in a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, California.
(US Border Patrol via AP)
Shortly after his arrival in Mexico in 2020, the AP reported that some agents complained about his near-obsession with capturing Rafael Caro Quintero, the infamous drug lord behind the murder of a US DEA agent—striking efforts to stop the flow of Chinese precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl. Quintero was finally apprehended last summer, months after the DEA called Palmeri to Washington.
Fox News Digital reached out to the DEA on Sunday regarding the AP findings, but did not immediately hear back.
In an email to the AP, Palmeri described the misconduct investigations as a “witch hunt” sparked by personal and professional jealousy and “an ill-conceived narrative to remove me from office.”
This undated photo provided on Jan. 24, 2020 by US Customs and Border Protection shows some of the more than 165 pounds of methamphetamine allegedly seized after smugglers attempted to cross the border from Nogales, Mexico, bundling dozens of packages and sending them through an underground drainage tunnel into Arizona, according to federal officials.
(US Customs and Border Protection via AP, File)
Palmeri added that his relationships with lawyers “have always been professional and ethical” and that all of his spending in Mexico was “prudential” and benefited the US government.
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“It is ironic,” Palmeri wrote in an email, “for the Department of ‘Justice’ to do this injustice to the country.”
Fox News Digital also reached out to Palmeri on LinkedIn but did not immediately hear back.
Oliva told the AP that the translation work Palmeri’s wife did for him “had nothing to do” with Palmeri and that he had “never met a more ethical, hard-working and highly effective drug enforcement agent.”
Associated Press contributed to this report.
