New DEA Chief’s Background Includes Surveillance Tech and Border Misinformation

Derek Maltz, Trump’s pick to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration, served in a leadership role at a surveillance tech company that has won over $200 million in federal contracts.

After retiring from the DEA in 2014, Maltz went to work for Nebraska-based PenLink, which sells surveillance tools to law enforcement, including a software that can track cell phones without a warrant. That software has been purchased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the DEA, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and sheriffs’ offices and city police departments, among other agencies, according to public records.

While at PenLink, Maltz’s title was executive director of government relations, but he did not register as a lobbyist with the federal government, records show. In an October email to the Texas Observer, Maltz described his role at PenLink as interacting with the firm’s U.S. government and foreign customers. He wrote that he had not registered as a lobbyist because his position did not involve lobbying.

“I assist the company by networking and building relationships with our customers around the globe as part of the Federal Team,” Maltz wrote. “My role with PenLink is mostly with federal agencies in the U.S., but have worked with foreign customers when asked to help my company.”

Someone with a title like “executive director of government relations” can use a loophole in the law to avoid registration, said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project. “Many people can slip under the requirements to register as a lobbyist, even if their work would be colloquially understood as lobbying,” Hauser said.

The ethics law regulating lobbying is outdated, he added. “Many, many of the people involved in influencing policy in Washington D.C. are not registered as lobbyists. The most important people tend not to be registered as lobbyists.”

During campaign season, Maltz also was a member of border czar Tom Homan’s nonprofit Border 911, a team of former law enforcement agents who traveled around the country to promote propaganda about elections, the U.S.-Mexico border, and immigration, according to a joint report by the Observer, the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Lighthouse Reports, Palabra, and Puente News Collaborative. Several Border 911 team members have received key positions in the incoming Trump administration, including Homan, Maltz, and former Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott, who was selected to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Shortly after Maltz joined PenLink in 2014, the company’s federal contracts more than doubled. In 2013, the firm had $12.2 million in contracts with federal agencies. The following year, that number increased to $25.2 million, according to usaspending.gov. PenLink has earned contracts from a number of federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Secret Service, the DEA, and ICE.

Maltz, PenLink, and the DEA did not respond to a request for comment for this story.