Trump picks Florida sheriff Chad Chronister for DEA administrator
Hillsborough County Sheriff
(NEW YORK) — President-elect Donald Trump announced he will nominate Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, Trump said that Chronister — who has served the Tampa, Florida, area for over 32 years — will work with his attorney general selection, Pam Bondi, to help secure the U.S.-Mexico Border.
The DEA administrator is a Senate-confirmed position.
“As DEA Administrator, Chad will work with our great Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to secure the Border, stop the flow of Fentanyl, and other Illegal Drugs, across the Southern Border, and SAVE LIVES,” Trump wrote.
Chronister was appointed to lead the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office by then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott in 2017 and has been twice reelected by voters.
He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in science in criminal justice from St. Leo University and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy’s 260th session.
Chronister is married to Nikki DeBartolo and has two sons.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody took to X on Saturday to congratulate Chronister on the nomination and praise his experience in fighting on the “frontlines” of the opioid crisis.
“Chad has fought on the frontlines of the opioid crisis, and I know his leadership and decades of experience will be invaluable as we work to combat the flow of Mexican fentanyl into our county,” Moody wrote.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a deal brokered by the U.S. “to end the devastating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.”
“This has been the deadliest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in decades,” Biden said in remarks from the Rose Garden.
Biden said the agreement reached will go into effect early Wednesday.
“At 4 a.m. tomorrow local time, the fighting across the Lebanese-Israeli border will end. Will end,” Biden said. “This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — An attorney representing two women who testified before the House Ethics Committee told ABC News in an exclusive interview former Rep. Matt Gaetz paid both his adults clients for sex.
Florida attorney Joel Leppard told ABC News’ Juju Chang that one of his clients also witnessed Gaetz having sex with a third woman — who was then 17 years old — at a house party in Florida.
“She testified [that] in July of 2017, at this house party, she was walking out to the pool area, and she looked to her right, and she saw Representative Gaetz having sex with her friend, who was 17,” Leppard said.
The Justice Department spent years probing the allegations against Gaetz, including allegations of obstruction of justice, before informing Gaetz last year that it would not bring charges. Gaetz has long denied any wrongdoing related to the allegations investigated during Justice Department probe.
“Matt Gaetz will be the next Attorney General. He’s the right man for the job and will end the weaponization of our justice system. These are baseless allegations intended to derail the second Trump administration. The Biden Justice Department investigated Gaetz for years and cleared him of wrongdoing. The only people who went to prison over these allegations were those lying about Matt Gaetz,” Alex Pfeiffer, Trump transition spokesman said.
Leppard, who has called for the House Ethics Committee to release its report amid Gaetz’s nomination to serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general, told ABC News that the former congressman paid both of his clients for sex using Venmo.
“Just to be clear, both of your clients testified that they were paid by Representative Gaetz to have sex?” Chang asked.
“That’s correct. The House was very clear about that and went through each. They essentially put the Venmo payments on the screen and asked about them. And my clients repeatedly testified, ‘What was this payment for?’ ‘That was for sex,'” Leppard said.
Leppard’s interview with ABC News comes days after he publicly called for the House Ethics Committee to be released.
“As the Senate considers former Rep. Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general, several questions demand answers,” Leppard said. “What if multiple credible witnesses provided evidence of behavior that would constitute serious criminal violations?”
The House Ethics Committee is expected to meet on Wednesday and discuss its report of Rep. Matt Gaetz and potentially vote on its release despite the fact that the investigation ended when Gaetz resigned from the House, multiple sources tell ABC News.
The news comes after the attorney on Friday first told ABC News that one of his clients had witnessed Gaetz have sex with a minor amid mounting pressure on the House Ethics Committee to release its report on its probe into the Florida congressman.
The two witnesses, who ABC News is not naming, both allegedly attended parties with the congressman and testified in both the federal and House Ethics investigations.
Gaetz’s one-time friend Joel Greenberg is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence after reaching a deal with prosecutors in May 2021 in which he pleaded guilty to multiple federal crimes including sex trafficking of a woman when she was a minor and introducing her to other “adult men” who also had sex with her when she was underage
Attorney John Clune, who represents the former minor at the center of the probe, called for the release of the Ethics Committee’s report on Thursday.
“Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events. We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses,” Clune said in a statement.
The woman, who is now in her 20s, according to sources, testified to the House Ethics Committee that the now-former Florida congressman had sex with her when she was 17 years old and he was in Congress, ABC News previously reported.
Gaetz faces an increasingly uphill nomination process in the Senate, with at least five Republican senators signaling skepticism that he could get enough support to be confirmed. President-elect Trump has repeatedly urged GOP leadership to bypass the traditional confirmation process through recess appointments, where Trump could appoint his cabinet while Congress is out of session.
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump tapped former California Rep. Devin Nunes as chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board in a series of announcements on Saturday.
Nunes has been a staunch Trump loyalist and serves as CEO of Trump Media and Technology Group, which runs the president-elect’s social media company, Truth Social.
“I am pleased to announce that I will appoint Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes as Chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which consists of distinguished citizens from outside of the Federal Government,” Trump posted in his announcement on Truth Social. “While continuing his leadership of Trump Media & Technology Group, Devin will draw on his experience as former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his key role in exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, to provide me with independent assessments of the effectiveness and propriety of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s activities.”
Nunes represented California in the House from 2003 to 2022. He was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee from 2015 until 2019, as well as ranking member from 2019 until his resignation from Congress on Jan. 1, 2022, to lead Truth Social. Nunes will remain in his role in the president-elect’s company while serving as chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
The President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, established in 1956, aids the president by offering independent analysis on the effectiveness of the intelligence community and the ability of U.S. agencies to meet “the nation’s intelligence needs.”
In addition to Nunes, Trump named longtime friend and donor Bill White as the U.S. ambassador to Belgium and Troy Edgar to be his deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Currently the CEO of Constellations Group, White was president of the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum before he resigned amid allegations of improper financial dealings. He has denied any wrongdoing. White, also a member of the Log Cabin Republicans, organized multiple pro-Trump LGBTQ fundraisers and events this past election.
Edgar, currently an executive at IBM, previously was Trump’s chief financial officer for the DHS and the associate deputy undersecretary of management for homeland security.
