“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
– George Orwell’s Animal Farm
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has allowed its employees to stay on the job despite internal investigations that found they had distributed drugs, lied to the authorities or committed other serious misconduct, newly disclosed records show.
Lawmakers expressed dismay this year that the drug agency had not fired agents who investigators found attended “sex parties” with prostitutes paid with drug cartel money while they were on assignment in Colombia.
Of the 50 employees the DEA’s Board of Professional Conduct recommended be fired following misconduct investigations opened since 2010, only 13 were actually terminated, the records show. And the drug agency was forced to take some of them back after a federal appeals board intervened.
In one case listed on an internal log, the review board recommended that an employee be fired for “distribution of drugs,” but a human resources official in charge of meting out discipline imposed a 14-day suspension instead. The log shows officials also opted not to fire employees who falsified official records, had an “improper association with a criminal element” or misused government vehicles, sometimes after drinking.
– From the post: Two-Tiered Justice: How DEA Agents Commit Egregious Acts with Zero Accountability
If you attempted to create the ideal privileged, untouchable, crony mutant in a test tube you might come up with a Federal Reserve employee who stole government information and leaked it to Goldman Sachs. You’d assume that someone with such a pedigree couldn’t possibly be sent to jail under America’s two-tiered Banana Republic justice system — and you’d be absolutely right.
Reuters reports:
A former Federal Reserve Bank of New York employee was spared prison on Wednesday, disappointing prosecutors who said his leaking of confidential documents to a friend at Goldman Sachs Group Inc justified time behind bars.
Jason Gross, 37, was fined $2,000 by U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein in Manhattan and sentenced to a year of probation with 200 hours of community service after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of theft of government property.
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