The Fast and Furious gun-running scandal that hit former President Barack Obama’s administration and disappeared soon after is now coming back to the surface thanks to interest from Mexico’s President, who wants it investigated.
According to Reuters, Mexican President Andres Obrador wants “information” on the operation in an effort to route out possible corruption:
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his government would send a diplomatic note to Washington for information on the 2009-2011 operation known as ‘Fast and Furious,’ a topic that has resurfaced in recent days amid a debate over historic U.S.-Mexico cooperation on security and possible corruption under previous administrations.
Setting out to stop cross-border gun smuggling, the U.S. scheme allowed people to illegally buy arms in the United States and take them to Mexico so that the weapons could be tracked and lead law enforcement officials to drug cartel bosses. Some weapons were later blamed for gangland slayings in Mexico.
“How could this be? A government that invades in this way, that flagrantly violates sovereignty, international laws,” Lopez Obrador said at his daily news conference.
To avoid a repeat, the matter needed to be cleared up, said Lopez Obrador, who noted that President Donald Trump had last year been “respectful” to Mexico in discussions over joint co-operation following two major security incidents.
The interest began with the arrest of Genaro Garcia Luna, Mexico’s Security Minister from 2006 to 2012, while in the United States on drug trafficking offenses. Luna had led the crackdown on drug gangs under former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, and with his arrest, Obrador wants to see how deep the corrupted rabbit hole goes.
What’s more, he wants to know how complicit the Obama administration was in the corruption. As Lorenzo Meyer, a historian at the Colegio de Mexico said, Obadaro isn’t interested in how this may affect the U.S., he’s only concerned about his own government.
“This (diplomatic) note is about domestic political matters,” said Meyer. “I don’t think he’s given thought about what this means for the United States.”
The call went out from Obrador’s office last Monday to have organization officials from the U.S. CIA, DEA, and FBI investigated.
This could open the door for another problem for the Obama administration which is currently under the microscope for what could be an attempted coup against then-candidate Donald Trump using the powers of the White House during the 2016 elections.
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