Heckuva job, Holdie! On Friday the Los Angeles Times (h/t Jazz Shaw) reported that the Fast and Furious gunwalking program, which Attorney General Eric Holder initially denied any knowledge of, had claimed another life. According to internal Department of Justice records, a chief of police in the Mexico state of Jalisco killed in January met his death at the business end of a high-powered rifle lost in the botched ATF sting operation.
Luis Lucio Rosales Astorga, the police chief in the city of Hostotipaquillo, was shot to death Jan. 29 when gunmen intercepted his patrol car and opened fire. Also killed was one of his bodyguards. His wife and a second bodyguard were wounded.
The weapon used in the killings, a semi-automatic WASR rifle, was traced back to the Lone Wolf Trading Company, a gun store in Glendale, Ariz. The rifle was purchased on Feb. 22, 2010, about three months into the Fast and Furious operation, by 26-year-old Jacob A. Montelongo of Phoenix. He later pleaded guilty to conspiracy, making false statements, and smuggling goods from the United States. He was sentenced to 41 months in prison.
Court records revealed that Montelongo personally obtained at least 109 firearms during Fast and Furious. It remains unclear how the WASR ended up in the state of Jalisco, which is deep in central Mexico.
The ATF declined to discuss the matter with LA Times reporter Richard Serrano. Officials with the agency maintain they are still compiling an inventory of all the lost firearms.
Mexican authorities, however, have confirmed that 211 people were killed or wounded by Fast and Furious weapons in Mexico. On this side of the border, a weapon from the botched tracking program was used in the 2010 murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. That crime set into motion a number of investigations in Washington that ultimately led back to the Justice Department and to chief law enforcement officer Eric Holder, who has stonewalled.
In 2011, Holder was found in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a demand for records by the House Oversight Committee. More recently the AG lied under oath again, denying any knowledge of his department’s unwarranted surveillance of “enemy” (read: Fox News) reporter James Rosen. Internal communications unearthed subsequently suggest Holder was apprised of the investigation, if not the one who ordered it.
Related Articles
- Will “Fast and Furious” be Eric Holder’s Waterloo?
- Obama orders Holder to investigate self
- Obama administration targeting of reporter finally hits a nerve: MSM reacts
- White House told of IRS targeting probe in April
- Report: At least 122 guns from “Fast and Furious” used in Mexican crimes
- Eric Holder ‘punk’d’: White man IDing himself as Holder offered AG’s ballot
- The Holder Justice Department, voter ID laws, and the liberal mind
- The truth behind Holder’s push for ‘electoral equality’
- Election law: Eric Holder’s cowardice is showing
