Patrick “Tate” Adamiak was sentenced to 20 years in prison because the court found he’d done all kinds of naughty things involving machine guns, rocket launchers, and a host of other things.
This wouldn’t be an issue except that it’s complete nonsense.
See, while the initial news reports of Adamiak’s sentencing presented it as a done deal–after all, he’d been convicted in a court of law, right?–the truth is that what we have here is the epitome of the term “travesty of justice.”
And while there had been some indications that a pardon was coming, as Lee Williams reports, it looks like that ship has set sail.
It now appears that all of the government’s quiet off-the-record admissions that Patrick “Tate” Adamiak would somehow be freed from his 20-year prison sentence because he did nothing wrong, or that he was a victim of Joe Biden’s out-of-control ATF, were bunk.
Adamiak’s appeal is scheduled for this Friday.
Regardless of the complete insanity of this case and the broken promises of government officials, Adamiak’s appellate attorney, Matthew Larosiere, has formed a simple strategy: He plans to tell the truth.
According to documents he sent to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit over the weekend, Larosiere takes apart a case the government is citing to support its argument: United States v. Bridges, which involved convictions for the “possession of actual, operable machineguns.”
“They therefore do not resolve the issues presented in this appeal, which concern destroyed, inoperable relics,” Larosiere argues in a letter sent to the court Saturday.
Adamiak had only legal guns and a host of gun parts, the evidence has shown, He did not own or possess a single machinegun—not one. In fact, ATF’s own “technical expert,” Firearms Enforcement Officer Jeffrey R. Bodell, went to great lengths to turn Adamiak’s legal gun parts into machineguns, but he was unable to achieve any fully automatic fire.
The government’s attorney’s response basically hinges on saying these were machine guns because Bodell said they were.
However, as past reporting by Williams has made abundantly clear, they weren’t. Not even remotely. Two semi-auto MAC-10s, a non-firing replica Sten, and a demilled RPG, all of which are perfectly lawful for any of us to own with special permits unless your state requires one, and he’s got 20 years in prison for it.
There’s a reason there’s an appeal. There should have been an appeal, and the fact that the ATF agent says these are machine guns should be irrelevant to the facts on the ground.
My hope is that the judge hears the case, makes the right determination, and sets Adamiak free.
However, I’m more than a little bothered by the fact that some people who should have been in the know said Adamiak would be freed before now, and he isn’t.
On one hand, I want to see Adamiak cleared by a court of law that expressly states the evidence against him was nonsense. On the other, this man has been locked up for several years already. A pardon would get him out of chains and into free air right away. I understand why that was the first choice.
Unfortunately, whoever was talking out of their posterior may well have given this young man a false hope.
Now, we see what happens with the appeals court. May God be merciful and grant the judge the wisdom to see through Bodell’s BS.
Editor’s Note: The ATF continues to be the greatest threat to the Second Amendment, even under the Trump administration.
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