by Lee Williams
Former U.S. Navy sailor Patrick “Tate” Adamiak has been pardoned by President Donald J. Trump—effective immediately. He was one of several people pardoned by President Trump Friday.
Adamiak, who still had 16 years left to serve of his 20-year federal prison sentence, will soon be a free man.
Adamiak said he was “numb headed” after he was released. He was dreaming of eating a burrito.
“I am ecstatic. I can’t believe it. It’s been four years in the making. It feels great. I am grateful that so many people stood behind me and made it happen,” Adamiak said. “I am grateful to President Trump. He gave me a full pardon. It’s all a lot to take in. I might even be able to get back into the military if I choose to.”
He has said he plans to continue his legal fight against the government since he never committed a single crime, and with his felony convictions completely overturned he can now fight as a free man.
The Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project published more than 60 stories debunking Adamiak’s arrest, conviction and lengthy prison sentence.
“We are thrilled that he is free. He did nothing wrong and broke no law,” said SAF founder and executive vice president Alan M. Gottlieb. “It took a humanitarian like President Trump to rectify a government wrong.”
Adamiak’s defense attorney Calum Welch was thrilled Friday.
“I am very excited for Tate and couldn’t be prouder to have played a small role in his getting home where he deserves to be,” Welch said.
Flawed investigation
Adamiak never sold a single real firearm—not one—even though he sold thousands of dollars per month of military gear and gun parts legally on his former website.
He was one of Gun Broker’s top 500 dealers, until the ATF decided to target him personally and lie under oath about the facts of his case.
Adamiak enlisted in the Navy when he was 17 and eventually became an E-6 Master-at-Arms. He has a bachelor’s degree and was working on a master’s until his arrest. He was on track for an officer’s commission within Naval Special Warfare.
The confidential informant, or CI, that brought Adamiak’s freedom to an end was cooperating with the ATF to work off charges of his own.
While dropping off gear at Adamiak’s home, the CI saw a replica grenade launcher and belt-fed machinegun replicas. He asked Adamiak if he had an SOT (Class 3 FFL). Adamiak told the CI the items were replicas—toys incapable of firing live rounds.
From this point forward, Adamiak said he became the target of a “fishing expedition by the ATF.”
Adamiak did agree to broker the purchase of a PPSh-41-barrel shroud for a client, which does not qualify as a firearm.
“It was literally purchased in open commerce, with a business check, from a confirmed FFL as an unregulated part directly off of Gun Broker,” Adamiak said last year. “Evidently, the ATF must have realized this was the closest thing they could get from me to a firearm, but what they really wanted was to get in my house to see the Mark 19 and the M240 replicas that their CI was boasting about. When applying for their search warrant the ATF told the judge in a criminal complaint that at issue was the PPSh-41-barrel shroud that they said was a machinegun, but that was not even close, legally.”
Show trial
More than 40 federal agents and police officers raided Adamiak’s home and a rental property he owned. Agents came from the ATF, FBI, HIS, NCIS, SWAT, Bomb Squad and local police.
“They turned my house upside-down but did not find a single functional machinegun or destructive device,” Adamiak said last year.
The agents seized about 35 replica firearms and parts from Adamiak’s personal collection and labeled them “suspected machineguns and destructive devices.”
Most worrisome, the agents seized money and silver Adamiak collected as “proceeds of illegal activity,” including his antique currency collection, which was worth thousands of dollars. Eventually, hiring an attorney was difficult for Adamiak because law enforcement took all of his savings.
“It’s my opinion and that of my family’s that the ATF realized they had messed up after they didn’t find a single illegal weapon,” Adamiak said from prison last year. “So, they completely reinterpreted the statutes and implemented a new rule to spin the jury and get me convicted. They manufactured crime to convict me.”
The ATF’s first indictment charged Adamiak with possessing 33 machineguns. There were no destructive devices mentioned. To counter, Adamiak and his attorneys hired former ATF senior official Dan O’Kelly as a defense witness.
O’Kelly joined the ATF as a Special Agent in 1988 after serving 10 years as a sworn police officer. He became a legend within the agency, including a stint as the lead instructor of Firearm Technology on staff at the ATF National Academy. O’Kelly has taught internationally and co-wrote the program establishing the Certified Firearm Specialist for the ATF, while he was at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
The prosecutors knew that O’Kelly would make mincemeat of their charges, so they reindicted Adamiak, charging him with possession of one machinegun and four destructive devices.
“They knew we’d make them look like fools at trial with Dan’s testimony, so the AUSA filed motions to block his expert testimony saying, ‘Any testimony about the definition of a frame or receiver of a machinegun would be both irrelevant and confusing to the jury.’” Adamiak explained last year.
His trial became “literally theatrical.”
“The AUSA absolutely twisted every fact, cherry-picked messages to completely change the whole narrative, and blatantly lied about everything to make me look bad,” Adamiak has said.
1. She claimed the down payment for Adamiak’s house were profits of illegal gun trafficking. Adamiak bought his house a year before he started his hobby business using his Navy pay.
2. She claimed Gun broker was the dark web.
3. She used his military training against him.
4. She claimed he stole parts from the military, despite the fact that he had detailed records for every single part.
5. She claimed his honest business strategy of buying low and selling for profit was “greed.”
6. She attempted to make Adamiak look like a neo-Nazi because he had his grandfather’s WWII war trophies stored in his safe, some of which had German markings on them.
Throughout the trial, the ATF’s attorneys showed jurors pictures of Adamiak’s extensive personal collection, including random parts, barrel shrouds and MAC-10 flats.
“They told the jury these were all machineguns,” Adamiak said in a previous interview. “The worst was the M240. They displayed a photo of the ATF case agent holding the belt-fed M240 replica and testified that it was a machinegun, and also made filings saying the same thing, despite the fact that the ATF’s own report says it’s a replica and not a firearm at all.”
Rather than winning the trial as his attorneys had claimed they would do, Adamiak was found guilty and sentenced to 20-years imprisonment.
Please check back for more updates throughout the day.
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Now, the question is: will the military reinstate him with full pay? And backpay?
Outstanding!
And also, Finally...!
Thank you, Mr Williams, for keeping a spotlight on his case and in the news cycle.