I love my country, but I fear my government. Fast and Furious has come up in comments about the current Deep State concerns in the Russian collusion investigation. The Los Angeles Times has a series of articles on the ATF Fast and Furious debacle. One article concerning a Glendale, Arizona firearms store owner is pretty revealing that the guns sold to Mexican drug cartels were not followed across the border.

Not just guns walked away, Eric Holder, the Attorney General in the Obama administration also walked away from any responsibility for around 3,000 firearms sold to criminals on the Mexican side of the border.

In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard’s Lone Wolf gun store. They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door. For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads of cash he normally would have turned away, he sold pistols, rifles and semiautomatics. He was assured by the ATF that they would follow the guns, and that the surveillance would lead the agents to the violent Mexican drug cartels on the Southwest border.

Mr. Andre was not the only gun store owner that had concerns.

Other firearms dealers shared his concerns. At the nearby Scottsdale Gun Club, the proprietor sent an email to Agent David Voth. “I want to help ATF,” he said, “but not at the risk of agents’ safety because I have some very close friends that are U.S. Border Patrol agents in southern AZ.”

Howard recalled that a chubby, bald and “very confident” man named Jaime Avila walked into the store on Jan. 16, 2010, and bought the AK-47s. Under the Fast and Furious protocol, agents were supposed to use the video cameras, surveillance, informants and law enforcement intelligence to follow the weapons and hope they led them to the drug cartels. But no agents were watching on the hidden cameras or waiting outside to track the firearms when Avila showed up. Howard faxed a copy of the sale paperwork to the ATF “after the firearms were gone,” assuming they would catch up later. They never did.

Between November 2009 and June 2010, according to an ATF agent’s email to William Newell, then the special agent-in-charge in Phoenix, Avila walked away with 52 firearms after he “paid approximately $48,000 cash. The firearms consisted of FN 5.7 pistols, 1 Barrett 50 BMG rifle, AK-47 variant rifles, Ruger 9mm handguns, Colt 38 supers, etc.…”

Jaime Avila was stopped at the border:

Sometime in spring or early summer 2010 — the exact date is unknown — U.S. immigration officers reportedly stopped Avila at the Arizona border with the two semiautomatics and 30 other weapons. According to two sources close to a congressional investigation into Fast and Furious, the authorities checked with the ATF and were told to release him with the weapons because the ATF was still hoping to track the guns to cartel members. The two semi-automatics would turn up again, this time at the scene of the Terry shooting. According to sources, they were hidden in backpacks and stashed in the desert, ready for Mexican bandits.

A Border Patrol Agent loses his life:

Late in the night on Dec. 14, in a canyon west of Rio Rico, Ariz., Border Patrol agents came across Mexican bandits preying on illegal immigrants. According to a Border Patrol “Shooting Incident” report, the agents fired two rounds of bean bags from a shotgun. The Mexicans returned fire. One agent fired from his sidearm, another with his M-4 rifle. One of the alleged bandits, Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, a 33-year-old Mexican from Sinaloa, was wounded in the abdomen and legs. Agent Brian Terry — 40, single, a former Marine — also went down. “I’m hit!” he cried. A fellow agent cradled his friend. “I can’t feel my legs,” Terry said. “I think I’m paralyzed.” A bullet had pierced his aorta. Tall and nearly 240 pounds, Terry was too heavy to carry. They radioed for a helicopter. But Terry was bleeding badly, and he died in his colleague’s arms. The bandits left Osorio-Arellanes behind and escaped across the desert, tossing away two AK-47 semiautomatics from Howard’s store.

The stop at the border of Jaime Avila was the moment that defined the idiocy of Fast and Furious. The death of Brian Terry was the defining moment for his family of a callous disregard for his life by a government agency that engaged in a coverup to protect Fast and Furious firearms that were found at the scene of his death, and repeated violations of Federal law, and Arizona state laws. This program put Arizonans at risk, and the Mexican government has stated that firearms sold during Fast and Furious to cartels have been involved in 170 crime scene incidents in Mexico.

You can read the full story by clicking on the link. Betrayal, collusion, and coverup — it’s all there.