After months of disagreement and disillusion with the Trump administration, the acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency has decided to resign at the end of the week, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.The move isn’t totally surprising: Chuck Rosenberg was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2015, so President Trump would likely eventually want his own pick to lead the DEA. But law enforcement officials told the New York Times that Rosenberg believes Trump lacks respect for the law.Not only was Rosenberg close to fired FBI Director James Comey, but he was upset by Trump telling law enforcement officers in July that they shouldn’t be “too nice” to suspects.Rosenberg — who reportedly considered resigning at the time — sent out an agency-wide email to his DEA officials shortly afterward, appearing to call Trump’s statements “wrong.”“The President, in remarks delivered yesterday in New York, condoned police misconduct regarding the treatment of individuals placed under arrest by law enforcement,” Rosenberg wrote, according to Politico. “In writing to you, I seek to advance no political, partisan, or personal agenda. Nor do I believe that a Special Agent or Task Force Officer of the DEA would mistreat a defendant. I know that you would not.”He went on, “I write because we have an obligation to speak out when something is wrong. That’s what law enforcement officers do. That’s what you do. We fix stuff. At least, we try.”Trump has also attacked the various federal probes investigating his administration and campaign’s potential ties to Russian meddling in the 2016 election, revealed he wished he’d never hired Jeff Sessions as attorney general, and suggested repeatedly that the Justice Department investigate his political enemies, such as Hillary Clinton.Rosenberg, a career prosecutor who also served under George Bush, reportedly declined to take on another Department of Justice role or to take over permanently as DEA head earlier this month.The Department of Justice declined to comment.
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