Weapons seized during the arrest of drug lord El Chapo earlier this month reportedly included a high-powered rifle that was part of the Obama administration’s botched U.S. to Mexico “gun walking” operation called Fast and Furious.
The Obama administration’s failed tracking initiative purposely allowed about 2,000 weapons from Phoenix area gun dealers to fall into the hands of drug cartels and has been linked to the murders of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry (and also possibly ICE Agent Jaime Zapata) as well as hundreds of Mexican citizens, including beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez.
Obama administration foes have argued that Fast and Furious was an attempt to justify the advancement of the government’s gun control agenda.
In 2012, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to hold then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over necessary records to lawmakers who were probing the Fast and Furious scandal.
The weapon in question found at El Chapo’s heavily guarded Los Mochis hideout is a.50 caliber rifle “that can stop a car or, as it was intended, take down a helicopter,” Fox News reported.
WOW. A rifle from Obama’s Fast and Furious program was found in El Chapo’s hideout: https://t.co/9HqPqFhBST
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) January 20, 2016
“When agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives checked serial numbers of the eight weapons found in his possession, they found one of the two.50-caliber weapons traced back to the ATF [Fast and Furious] program, sources said,” Fox added. “Federal law enforcement sources told Fox News that ‘El Chapo’ would put his guardsmen on hilltops to be on guard for Mexican police helicopters that would fly through valleys conducting raids. The sole purpose of the guardsmen would be to shoot down those helicopters, sources said.”
‘Fast and Furious’ rifle capable of taking down chopper found in ‘El Chapo’ Mexican hideout https://t.co/KgDhtVDUGv #ElChapo #fastandfurious
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) January 20, 2016
The El Chapo-Fast and Furious connection was also confirmed by information that an unnamed government source provided to the Arizona Republic newspaper. “A high-powered rifle seized during the Jan. 8 capture of Mexican cartel leader Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman was among hundreds of firearms allowed into Mexico years earlier in a controversial Arizona sting operation, according to a federal law-enforcement figure.”
In August 2015, National Review Online reported that “one of two Muslim terrorists killed attempting to murder attendees of a ‘Draw Muhammad’ cartoon contest held in Texas in May, had acquired one of the guns he owned as a result of the Fast and Furious operation.”
In a related development, a federal judge yesterday ordered the Obama administration to cough up documents related to Operation Fast and Furious as part of a pending lawsuit filed by the U.S. House. “U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered the administration to release documents that it has been attempting to withhold by asserting executive privilege,” The Hill explained. Judge Jackson is an Obama appointee.
As previously detailed by the Inquisitr, El Chapo is reportedly worth about $1.4 billion as of 2016. El Chapo was busted on January 8, just a few months after he gave in a now much-criticized exclusive interview with actor Sean Penn for Rolling Stone magazine. Police authorities apparently say that the interview was a major way that helped them get to El Chapo’s hideout.
As far as what actually may have motivated the feds in the Fast and Furious initiative, “Remember, the purpose of this program was to put weapons in Mexican gangsters’ hands that could be traced back to American sales, as a pretext for stricter gun regulations here. They were willing to accept increased deaths as collateral damage,” law professor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit claimed.
[Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP)