Patrick Tate Adamiak is a Navy veteran, a son, a brother, a collector of military memorabilia, and federal prisoner No. 95252-509. He is starting his fifth year of a 20-year sentence after being convicted of violating federal gun laws.
Lawyers for the former Navy SEAL candidate are preparing to ask a U.S. District Court judge to reconsider Adamiak’s sentence at some point in the future. The attorneys were hoping to present evidence they say shows agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) lied during Adamiak’s trial.
However, a ruling by Senior District Court Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen limits the hearing to only the mandate set by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is limited to sentencing.
Calum Welch, one of Adamiak’s lawyers, said that under that order, the best his client can hope for is to be released with time served. According to Welch, Adamiak has been a model prisoner even though he believes he was unjustly charged and imprisoned.
“He’s been a model guy while he’s been residing in the [Bureau of Prisons],” Welch told The Epoch Times.
“I’m still asking for the same thing from our original position paper, which is effectively a sentence that’s time served and asking that you be immediately released after that.”
On Oct. 21, 2022, Adamiak was convicted on one count of receiving and possessing an unregistered firearm, one count of unlawful possession and transfer of a machine gun, and three counts of receiving and possessing a destructive device.
The court sentenced Adamiak to 20 years in prison on each count, with sentences for the first two counts to run consecutively. The sentences for the remaining three counts are to be served concurrently.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that counts one and two were the same crime and the sentences violated the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause. This prevents a person from being prosecuted more than once for the same crime.
The Appeals Court ordered that one of the counts be dropped and Adamiak resentenced.
While Welch had hoped to address what he says are serious problems with the ATF’s case against his client, Allen has limited the arguments she will hear to the Appeals Court’s ruling.
In a June 13 ruling, Allen wrote that the Appeals Court ruling is limited to the sentencing issue.
“The Court notes the defendant’s objections for the record but finds that it lacks jurisdiction to address them at this juncture,” Allen’s order reads.
Adamiak, his family, and supporters say he was unfairly prosecuted by the ATF during the Biden administration.
One retired ATF agent was set to testify as an expert on Adamiak’s behalf. He believes the ATF investigation was driven by a political agenda born in the Biden White House.
“If you have an anti-gun administration as we did in the last one, [the ATF agents’] opinion is what they are told it is,” former ATF special agent Dan O’Kelly told The Epoch Times.
The ATF did not respond to interview requests from The Epoch Times. Newly appointed ATF Director Robert Cekada faced a question about the case during a recent appearance before congressional lawmakers.
On May 14, he told the House Oversight Committee that he had read a letter from Adamiak and spoken with Adamiak’s lawyers about a resentencing hearing scheduled in June.
“I understand the [Department of Justice] is looking at the case as well for resentencing scheduled in June. I don’t know the specific facts on the DOJ side, but we are working on that as well,” Cekada told the committee.
Adamiak’s appeals are exhausted, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied him a hearing. Sitting in a federal prison cell in New Jersey, he’s hanging his hopes on the June resentencing, a commutation, or ideally, intervention by President Donald Trump.
“The Supreme Court failed to look at my case. … My only chance on my life being restored anytime in the near future would be pretty much a presidential pardon at this point,” Adamiak told The Epoch Times. “That’s my last Hail Mary.”
This isn’t exactly where the boy who grew up hunting and fishing the wilds of Pennsylvania expected to be.
Adamiak said he’s always been interested in firearms and military history. As a boy, he dreamed of becoming a Navy SEAL and was proud to serve. He said that in addition to providing a good living and enabling him to serve his country, it allowed him to add to his military memorabilia collection.
He said the weapons in his collection consisted of inert “training” items and non-functioning replicas.
This was intentional, Adamiak said, because he didn’t want to deal with the requirements of a federal firearms license. The license is required for anyone who buys, sells, or trades guns and certain gun parts regulated as firearms under the law.
“Any firearm that I ever had that was actually a [complete] firearm remained in my possession. I’ve never sold one,” Adamiak told The Epoch Times.
He said his long-term goal was to retire from the Navy and build his own military history museum.
In April 2022, he felt like life was going his way. He and his girlfriend bought a house together, he also owned a rental home, and his online business was growing.
More than that, his military career appeared to be on track toward his goal of becoming a Navy SEAL. Things appeared to be going his way.
However, under the Biden administration, the ATF was taking a hard look at anyone involved in the firearms trade.
The agency stirred controversy when it reversed years of opinions that pistol stabilizing braces turned legal pistols based on semi-automatic rifles into illegal short-barreled rifles, after millions of the devices had been sold.
The agency also took a much harder stance toward federally licensed gun dealers. The merchants, especially small businesses, began to complain that even minor paperwork errors were resulting in license revocations.
In October 2021, a confidential informant told ATF special agent William Hairston Jr.,that he had seen several prohibited items, including alleged machine guns, in Adamiak’s home, according to court records.
Hairston filed an affidavit with the court stating that he trusted the informant who had felony convictions for possession of firearms and explosives in 1996, 1999, 2000, and 2009. Hairston stated that the informant had not been promised anything for his information.
Adamiak didn’t know the ATF had set its sights on him until it raided both of his properties and seized much of his collection on April 7, 2022.
According to the court record, the ATF reported seizing illegal firearms, including machine guns, as well as destructive devices. The ATF filed an examination report with the court outlining how the items seized violated the law.
In that report, special agent Daniel Beasley described how he converted the replica guns and inert devices into firearms or destructive devices. One example is an entry for a non-firing replica of a STEN machine gun.
The STEN machine gun is a World War II-era submachine gun developed by the British. It was inexpensive and easy to manufacture, making it ideal for the island nation facing the possibility of invasion by Nazi Germany.
It’s a popular firearm for history buffs and collectors. However, to legally own a working STEN, one must have a federal firearms license.
The replica in Adamiak’s collection was a non-firing model and required no license to own. Similar guns are still available for purchase.
In the report, Beasley described how he modified the replica to fire live rounds by installing a firing mechanism and a real STEN barrel. According to the report, Beasley had to wrap part of the barrel in electrical tape. He could only fire one round at a time with the modified replica.
He still designated it a machine gun, even though the legal definition for a machine gun was the ability to fire continuously by holding the trigger down.
Welch said it appears the ATF investigated crimes that Adamiak could have committed, rather than any he may have allegedly done.
“That just attributes conduct he didn’t commit, intent he didn’t have, and items he didn’t possess, which shouldn’t be the end result,” Welch told The Epoch Times.
O’Kelly said this was indicative of issues he had with the ATF’s evidence. The retired agent said that Adamiak should never have been investigated, much less charged, because at the time of the investigation, all the items he had were legal and not considered firearms.
Many of the items seized during the raid were firearm parts, namely the frames and receivers. Frames and receivers are currently regulated as if they were firearms, even though they cannot fire on their own.
Under current federal law, a firearm is defined as “(A) any weapon (including a starter gun) which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive; (B) the frame or receiver of any such weapon; (C) any firearm muffler or firearm silencer; or (D) any destructive device.”
O’Kelly points out that the current definition is not the same as it was when the ATF raided Adamiak’s property.
Prior to April 2022, frames and receivers were defined as “that part, which houses the hammer, the bolt breech block, the firing mechanism, and is generally threaded at its forward portion to receive the barrel.”
He said that none of Adamiak’s property met that earlier definition.
“There were no frames or receivers [by the definition of that time] in any of the evidence whatsoever. If it’s not a frame or receiver, it’s not a firearm, and certainly isn’t a machine gun if it’s not a firearm to begin with,” O’Kelly said.
O’Kelly said that Adamiak should never have been charged.
After April 2022, ATF revised the definition to remove the bolt, breech block, and firing mechanism requirements.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance is a D.C.-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting constitutional freedoms from violations by the administrative state, according to its website.
According to Jacob Huebert, a senior litigation counsel for the alliance, the administrative state is the system of federal agencies established by Congress for various public purposes. These agencies often have the authority to write rules that carry the force of law.
Huebert said this creates situations in which the agencies can reinterpret rules to achieve an objective they can’t achieve through the legislative process.
Huebert said the danger lies in vesting too much authority in one entity, which he said violates the Constitution’s separation of powers. He said that ensuring each branch of government stays in its own lane is the best way to hold each branch accountable.
“The making of law should be entirely within the Congress … so nothing that an agency does should differ at all from what the statute says. You can’t have agencies that are accountable to neither the president nor to the voters, because then they aren’t accountable to anybody,” Huebert said.
Adamiak said his case illustrates the problems that can arise when an agency can redefine the rules and policies it has set.
“Well, the ATF put together these reports that said that everything I had was a firearm receiver, despite none of them meeting the legal definition under the statute or the Code of Federal Regulation,” Adamiak told The Epoch Times.
“I went to a jury trial, and I think they just took the ATF at their word.”
Speaking from the family’s property in Pennsylvania, Adamiak’s father, David Adamiak, offers a more succinct assessment of the government’s case.
“These are all lies,” he told The Epoch Times.
While Adamiak has found little success in the courts, pro-Second Amendment organizations and politicians are rallying to his aid.
In addition to letters from family, friends, and fellow sailors, at least six members of Congress have signed a letter to U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, DOJ pardon attorney Edward J. Martin, and Cekada, seeking executive clemency for Adamiak.
The letter is signed by Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), and Rep. Rob Bresnahan Jr. (R-Pa.).
Members of Congress ask Martin to join them in urging President Trump to consider Adamiak’s case for executive clemency. They write that the 20-year sentence is “an exceptionally severe outcome for a nonviolent case centered on regulatory interpretation rather than harmful conduct.”
“This case involved no violence, victims, or criminal misuse of any weapon. Instead, the charges stemmed from regulatory interpretations and classification decisions that treated nonfunctional collector items as regulated firearms,” the letter states.
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