Mexican Drug Cartel Used "Fast and Furious" Gun in Failed Assassination Plot

Just when you think the news about the disastrous "Fast and Furious" gun-walking operation can't possibly get any worse, a U.S. government report has disclosed that Mexican drug cartel operatives used a firearm from the infamous scheme in a failed attempt to assassinate a high-ranking Mexican law enforcement official.

According to a recent Daily Caller article, the gun "was seized in Tijuana in connection with a drug cartel's conspiracy to kill the police chief of Tijuana, Baja California, who later became the Juárez police chief."

An August 6, El Paso Times article gives further details:

The firearm was found Feb. 25, 2010, during an arrest of a criminal cell associated with Teodoro "El Teo" García Simental and Raydel "El Muletas" López Uriarte, allies of the Sinaloa cartel.

Tijuana police said they arrested four suspects in March 2010 in connection with a failed attempt to take out Julián Leyzaola, and that the suspects allegedly confessed to conspiring to assassinate the police chief on orders from Tijuana cartel leaders.

The firearm in question was traced back to the "Fast and Furious" operation.

Late last month, U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) released a nearly 2,400-page report--"Fast and Furious: The Anatomy of a Failed Operation"--based on interviews from hearings and reviews of thousands of pages of documents.

The Daily Caller article also notes that, in addition to this latest revelation, the congressional report also revealed new evidence that Obama administration BATFE officials sought to cover up the "Fast and Furious" connection to a death other than that of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

The article reports that Mario Gonzalez, the brother of then-Mexican prosecutor Patricia Gonzalez, was killed in early November 2010. And according to the congressional report, two of the firearms found at Mario Gonzalez's murder scene were tied to "Fast and Furious."

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