Obama Administration Sent Guns To Drug Cartels

The Obama administration’s botched Operation Fast and Furious, which provided weapons used in hundreds of crimes and killing sprees in Mexico, was broader than previously thought:

Univision reported that the effort wasn’t just limited to one ATF office in Arizona — it had other operations in Florida and Texas as well. The ATF and Department of Justice lost more weapons than they have so far acknowledged, and those weapons have been tied to even more murders than previously thought — including a massacre of teens and young adults. This report literally showed blood flowing in the streets as a result of Fast and Furious, as ABC News reports:

“On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party. . .Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally fled. Indirectly, the United States government played a role in the massacre by supplying some of the firearms used by the cartel murderers.”

Although Operation Fast and Furious occurred entirely under the Obama administration, President Obama has falsely claimed that it began “under the previous administration.” In reality, as ABC’s Jack Tapper and others have noted, “Fast & Furious started in the fall of 2009, 9 months after President Obama was sworn in.” (Prior gun-walking programs existed, but they were completely different, since the government made efforts to track the guns in those earlier programs, and they did not lead to anyone being killed.)

As the revelations about this scandal continue, more lawmakers have called for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder, who was held in contempt by Congress for allegedly withholding documents about Fast and Furious. The Office of the Inspector General recently cleared Holder of deliberate wrongdoing after an 18-month-long investigation that some critics have derided as a whitewash designed to give the administration an excuse to avoid handing over incriminating documents to Congress during that 18-month period. Meanwhile, Holder has drawn significant criticism not only for Fast and Furious, but also for his politicization of the Justice Department through partisan Justice Department hiring, especially in the Civil Rights Division, and through ideologically motivated prosecutions that violate free speech, and retaliation against whistle blowers.