Patrick “Tate” Adamiak had a lot going for him. He was on his way to becoming a Navy SEAL and had a nice side hustle going of selling gun parts and memorabilia. He had a promising future.
Unfortunately, that future was shattered.
In what looks like one of the grossest miscarriages of justice I’ve ever laid my eyes on, the ATF railroaded Adamiak by making massive modifications to replica firearms that weren’t designed to fire, misrepresented semi-auto firearms as firearms, and just completely fabricated the entire case.
The appeals process is designed to address this sort of miscarriage of justice, though. It’s where people wrongfully convicted can challenge their convictions.
However, when federal prosecutors are still relying on discredited reports to justify the conviction, we have a problem.
It now appears that the only way former American sailor, Patrick “Tate” Adamiak, may get out of his undeserved 20-year prison sentence is through a presidential pardon, because federal prosecutors are now using the lies and fake evidence created by the ATF to fight an appeal filed by the 31-year-old former Navy E-6, who had just been accepted by Naval Special Warfare before his arrest.
Adamiak has been in federal prison for almost 30 months. It can take up to half of a year for his court hearings.
In a letter to prosecutors sent Feb. 14, Adamiak’s appellant attorney pointed out that his client never possessed anything illegal. Prosecutors, unfortunately, don’t seem to care.
Matthew Larosiere, Esq., Counsel for Appellant Adamiak, cited United States v. Justin Bryce Brown, in a letter sent to the Clerk of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
“The argument found to be lacking in Brown is in all material respects identical to the argument brought by the government below in opposing Appellant’s motion to dismiss,” Larosiere wrote. “Appellant feels it important to note the items charged in Brown were functional machineguns, as opposed to the non-functional items charged here.”
In other words, Adamiak had gun parts but not any illegal firearms, and he certainly had no machineguns.
But in a response mailed five days later, Assistant United States Attorney Jacqueline R. Bechara continued the prosecution’s the-guns-are-real tactic.
“Because Adamiak’s possession of an unregistered machinegun fell outside the scope of the Second Amendment, the district court properly denied his motion to dismiss,” Bechara said in her response.
Except he didn’t.
One of the firearms was a Sten replica that was never designed to be fired. The ATF modified it–a replica that is still pretty widely sold lawfully–with multiple modifications and could only fire a single round through it. That was at least partially because their modifications made it impossible for a magazine to seat properly. Still, it was enough.
They classified receivers that had been chopped in half as machine guns.
They classified demilled RPGs as functional weapons, which they were after they took them and modified them to be functional. These are still widely sold through lawful means.
They classified his semi-auto MAC-10s as machine guns despite the fact that they never got them to fire more than a single round with one trigger pull. These are still sold.
Go and read the rest of Lee Williams’s work on this. He’s done the legwork on all of this, uncovering and reporting so much of it and I’m just really trying to amplify his work where I can.
But everyone needs to know what has happened here. This could easily happen to any of us. Many of us are not just into shooting, but also guns in general. Where we might not be able to afford a Sten, we can buy a replica. Where we may have no interest in shooting RPGs, especially after a certain video on Highspeed Ballistics, having a demilled RPG launcher sitting around the old man cave might be kind of cool.
Yet this could happen to any of us if the ATF decided we were doing something we weren’t supposed to.
So much of what the ATF does is, well, nothing. They sit on their posteriors and just write up federal charges for people arrested by local or state police. Hell, the FBI has done more actual investigation of criminals in possession of firearms than the ATF has, from what I can see.
But now we see what happens when they try to make a case on their own.
They didn’t have the evidence to convict Adamiak, so they decided to manufacture it.
Now, I get that not everyone shares my views on machine guns and the National Firearms Act. That’s fine. They have every right to their opinion, even if it’s wrong.
But can’t we all get behind the idea that the ATF manufacturing evidence is a terrible thing? Yes, this is worse than when a paid informant pestered Randy Weaver to cut off a shotgun barrel shorter than what is lawfully allowed until he finally caved and did it, leading to Ruby Ridge.
That was entrapment, but Weaver ultimately did the thing. Adamiak didn’t even do that.
This is wrong by every metric and Attorney General Pam Bondi could address this hear and now by directing federal prosecutors to admit to what happened in court. Acting ATF Director Kash Patel also needs to address this particular bit of rot in the system he currently oversees.
The question is will either of them do it.
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