In choosing Sheriff Chad Chronister of Hillsborough County, Fla., to run the Drug Enforcement Administration, President-elect Donald J. Trump opted for someone with a substantial record in local law enforcement but virtually no experience with the complex international investigations for which the agency is known.
Sheriff Chronister, 56, has worked in the sheriff’s office, which serves the Tampa area, for more than 30 years, rising over the decades from patrol deputy to narcotics detective to the department’s top job, which he has been elected to three times since his initial appointment in 2017.
But when Mr. Trump announced his D.E.A. pick on Saturday on social media, praising Sheriff Chronister’s “countless commendations and awards,” some longtime D.E.A. agents and officials started trading messages that simply read, “Who?”
Mr. Trump’s D.E.A. selection was never going to be as well known, or as contentious, as his pick to run the F.B.I., which has long sat at the center of his aggrieved belief that the country’s national security apparatus has been out to get him. And unlike Kash Patel, the loyalist whom Mr. Trump wants to take control of — or perhaps a wrecking ball to — the bureau, it does not appear that Sheriff Chronister was chosen to wreak vengeance on the president-elect’s enemies inside the D.E.A.
Still, Sheriff Chronister will likely face an array of challenges should he be confirmed as the agency’s administrator, starting with the fact that the D.E.A.’s budget is nearly five times as large and has almost three times as many employees as the department he now runs. The agency also operates in more than 60 countries and works in close coordination with other federal law enforcement agencies and with the intelligence community.
Some D.E.A. veterans spent Saturday and Sunday looking up Sheriff Chronister and quietly wondering whether he was up for the tasks of confronting Mexico’s drug cartels and curbing China’s production of fentanyl. Those tough jobs have gotten harder given Mr. Trump’s repeated threats to put tariffs on both countries as a way of not only stopping the flow of drugs into the United States but also stemming migration.
