Dems Blame AZ Officials for ‘Fast And Furious’ Gun Program

In a new report prepared by Democrats, they blame the Fast Furious gun running program on local and regional Arizona officials.

According to the new report,  Top White House officials claim they knew nothing of the Fast And Furious program, which was designed to let low level gun runners buy illegal weapons with hopes of using them to lead to higher level criminals and drug dealers.  However, the DEA and ATF "lost" several thousand weapons during the process.    Hundreds of these guns showed up at crime scenes, but the scandal did not blow up until several weapons were found at the crime scene where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a shootout with drug dealers.   From Fox News and the report:

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"It is clear that ATF agents in Phoenix and prosecutors in the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office embarked on a deliberate strategy not to arrest suspected straw purchasers while they attempted to make larger cases against higher-level targets," the report reads. 

"Although these officials claimed they had no probable cause to arrest any straw purchasers at the time, allowing hundreds of illegally purchased military-grade assault weapons to fall into the hands of violent drug cartels over the course of five years created an obvious and inexcusable threat to public safety on both sides of the border."

  Local and regional ATF, Border Patrol and DEA Agents claim White House officials knew of the program, and they were instructed not to arrest many of these low level gun runners.  A number of field agents who were monitoring such operations and conducting surveillance say they were directly told by supervisors (acting upon higher up orders) NOT to pursue or detain these criminals.   It is ironic the timing of this Democrat report,  coming out two days before AG Eric Holder is set to testify in this matter.