By Dave Workman | Editor-in-Chief
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is reportedly pressing the U.S. Government for full details about the Obama administration’s “Operation Fast & Furious” scandal that flooded his country with illegally-trafficked guns as part of a gun running “sting” operation that got horribly out of control ten years ago.
The operation was exposed following the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a gunfight near the U.S. Mexican border in Arizona. Two guns recovered from the crime scene were traced back to Fast & Furious by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The operation was immediately shut down by embarrassed ATF officials, but when reports revealed the full extent of the debacle, congressional hearings were held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, then chaired by former Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA).
Earlier this month, President Obrador demanded answers, and a gun rights organization—the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms—agreed.
“Fast and Furious was a scandal of monumental proportions,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb recalled. “The Obama/Biden administration at first feigned ignorance, then withheld thousands of subpoenaed documents from the House Oversight Committee, claiming executive privilege until a federal court ordered them to be turned over to investigators. One ATF agent told the Committee that Fast & Furious was ‘the perfect storm of idiocy.’
“We can certainly sympathize with Mexican President Obrador,” he continued. “Under Barack Obama, Joe Biden and former Attorney General Eric Holder, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed more than 2,000 firearms to get into criminal hands in Mexico. Many people have been killed, including Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.”
Terry died in a gun battle in December 2010. Within weeks, the story of a border confrontation became an Obama administration scandal.
“Mexico and every U.S. citizen deserves not only an apology but Holder and several other former Obama/Biden administration officials should have been criminally prosecuted,” Gottlieb stated. “Bad actors should be punished, not law abiding American gun owners, as Joe Biden has proposed with his gun control agenda if elected president.
“Incredibly,” Gottlieb added, “the Obama-Biden administration used this fiasco as an excuse to implement new requirements for firearms dealers in the Southwest, as if they were to blame for what happened.”
Holder became the first serving U.S. Attorney General to be held in criminal and civil contempt of Congress.
“Any apology should come from those responsible,” Gottlieb observed. “That would be Obama, Biden, Holder and the ATF and Justice Department officials who cooked up this outrageous scheme.
“It’s been almost ten years since Fast & Furious was exposed,” Gottlieb said. “That’s long enough to wait for answers. We can’t allow this scandal to be swept under a rug any longer. Unfortunately, if Joe Biden becomes the next president, with his selective memory, he’ll deliberately forget this travesty and the behavior it spawned.”
