DEA administrator sends email to staff challenging Trump

— -- Acting Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Administrator Chuck Rosenberg sent an email to his staff on Saturday challenging President Trump’s recent controversial remarks to law enforcement officials, which he said “condoned police misconduct regarding the treatment of individuals placed under arrest by law enforcement.”

The memo, addressed to “all” DEA staff, states, “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.”

Rosenberg stated he wrote the email to “offer a strong reaffirmation of the operating principles to which we, as law enforcement professionals, adhere.”

Rosenberg also states he does not believe a “Special Agent or Task Force Officer of the DEA would mistreat a defendant.”

Trump made the remarks on Friday to an audience of law enforcement officials in Suffolk County, New York. His remarks appeared to condone unnecessary use of force by police.

“When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon -- you just see them thrown in, rough -- I said, please don’t be too nice. Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you're protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over?” Trump said. “Like, don’t hit their head and they've just killed somebody -- don't hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay?”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders downplayed the comments at Tuesday’s press briefing. ABC News White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega pressed Sanders on whether Trump was making a “joke about police brutality.”

Sanders said, “I think you guys are jumping and trying to make something out of nothing. He was simply making a joke and it was nothing more than that.”

Since Friday, law enforcement agencies and organizations across the country have issued statements countering Trump’s remarks.

Rosenberg, in his staff email, listed the DEA’s core values of rule of law, respect, compassion, service, devotion, integrity, accountability, leadership and courage and added, “This is how we conduct ourselves. This is how we treat those whom we encounter in our work: victims, witnesses, subjects, and defendants. This is who we are.”

Before being appointed as acting DEA administrator, Rosenberg was chief of staff for FBI Director James Comey, and previously served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.