Posted on 05/25/2024 7:28:58 AM PDT by george76
ATF agents cut off the electricity to Bryan Malinowski's Little Rock home before executing their search warrant March 19.
None of the agents wore body cameras, and they covered Malinowski's doorbell camera with tape to hide their actions. Fifty-seven seconds after kicking down the front door, Malinowski was fatally shot in the head. His wife, Maer Malinowski, was pulled out of her home wearing only bedclothes and forced into the back of a squad car, where she was held against her will for four hours in 34-degree weather, despite her frequent pleas to check on her dying husband.
"If that isn't weaponization of government, I don't know what is," Congressman Jim Jordan, R-OH, said Thursday morning, during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, which he chairs.
The hearing, which was held in the Rayburn House Office Building and was called "Oversight of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives," lasted more than three hours. ATF Director Steven Dettelbach was the only witness..
Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee tried to force Dettelbach to answer questions about Malinowski's killing. However, as expected, he declined to answer and tap-danced around the members' questions, citing the ongoing criminal investigation by Arkansas officials as an excuse. Dettelbach was also questioned about ATF's zero-tolerance policy for gun dealers, which has led to a dramatic increase in revocations of Federal Firearm Licenses (FFL). Other lawmakers asked the ATF director about his agency's confusing new rule, which requires anyone who sells firearms "predominantly to earn a profit" to obtain an FFL.
Dettelbach appeared before the committee wearing a grey suit, white shirt, pale blue tie and an ATF lapel pin. He sat alone at the witness table, which was covered with several folders and piles of paper.
Jordan's questions about the Malinowski killing were on-point, accusatory and unrelenting.
"When you make up the rules as you go, bad things happen," Jordan observed. "People might even get shot. That's what happened to Bryan Malinowski. What were you trying to hide, disabling the doorbell camera, cutting the electricity and not wearing body cameras?"
"We're not trying to hide things," Dettelbach insisted. "After the incident, along with Little Rock Police, we called for an independent investigation, which is being done by Arkansas State Police. Mr. Chairman, the reason we called for the investigation is we're not trying to hide anything, but I am not going to talk about the investigation out of fairness. I'm not commenting on pending (legal) matters. It's not fair to people."
In his opening statement, Dettelbach claimed ATF goes after trigger-pullers, shooters and gun traffickers, which he called the "the worst of the worst." He never mentioned that Malinowski had never been arrested and had no criminal record.
Dettelbach claimed "gun violence" was the leading cause of death for children, which Congressman Troy Nehls, R-TX, and several other Republican lawmakers completely debunked.
Nehls, a former Sheriff who said he never allowed no-knock search warrants or "SWAT teams coming to doors dressed like ninjas," asked Dettelbach what policies ATF has in place to mitigate risk to agents and the public during search warrants.
"We do a thorough job of training, and we have operations planning," Dettelbach replied.
"Executing search warrants at pre-dawn hours, how does that mitigate risk?" Nehls asked.
Dettelbach declined to answer, citing the ongoing criminal investigation, adding "Police are entitled to due process, too."
"When you kick down a door and you don't even announce who you are, what do you think is going to happen," Nehls asked. "Were you aware he had no criminal history?"
Nehls cited a growing lack of trust between police and the communities they serve, which he said was exacerbated by ATFs lack of body cameras.
"This stinks to high heaven," Nehls said. "I highly recommend you cooperate with this committee. You've got to get your priorities in order. It seems like there is a coverup here."
Two ATFs
"You've accused a dead man of a crime," said Congressman Darrell Issa, R-CA. "Did you allege he had committed a felony?"
"The judge did find that," Dettelbach said, again citing the ongoing investigation by Little Rock officials.
"I hope they find that you blew it badly enough that criminal charges are filed," Issa said. "The Hunter Biden (investigation) is over. Why didn't you do a no-knock on him?"
Issa, a frequent ATF critic, said he knew what really transpired March 19.
"You're playing one of the games that the Chair and I didn't like during Fast & Furious," Issa said. "If some group of 10 carloads of people showed up and kicked in the door in the dark of night, we would be talking about a planned murder of somebody who had every right to have a weapon in their home, an expectation of a weapon in their home, and an expectation they may use it. Mr. Malinowski was killed doing what any normal citizen does when people enter their home during the dark of night, and they don't know who they are. I believe he had a very real belief he was defending his wife and family, and you killed him. Those are the facts. I have been investigating ATF for many years. I've consistently seen two ATFs: One we need and deserve, and one that plays fast and loose. It would have been reasonable to arrest him at work. If you'd done that, he'd be alive today."
Criminalizing FFLs
Congressman Matt Gaetz, R-FL, asked a simple question: "How many firearms does someone have to sell to be engaged in the business of firearms?"
"The rule has 16 pages and there are 400 pages of explanation," Dettelbach said. "The factors are conduct-based, not numerical-based."
"No number," Gaetz marveled. "For a regular person trying to figure out how many guns they have to sell before registering as a dealer – for a regular person, more information is less helpful."
Gaetz pointed out that at Texas court had enjoined ATF's new rule, finding that the agency had exceeded its authority.
"It seems you're trying to criminalize an entire enterprise," Gaetz said.
...
Congressman Tom McClintock, R-CA, asked Dettelbach if he had ever "expressed remorse to Mr. Malinowski's widow and family."
"I will now and have before," Dettelbach said.
McClintock asked if Dettelbach knew of the raid in advance.
"I first heard after the fact," Dettelbach said.
"Who have you disciplined? What have you done?" McClintock asked.
"We went together with the Little Rock Police and requested an outside investigation. And we have fully cooperated," Dettelbach replied.
Congressman Jordan asked about the status of the investigation.
"The Arkansas State Police turned over the investigation file to Pulaski County – state prosecutors," Dettelbach said. "I believe this is all public. I believe they're reviewing it. That part we know."
Congressman Tom Tiffany, R-WI, then said he has noted a "dual standard of justice in America: Hunter Biden vs. Bryan Malinowski."
Not one of the Democrats on the committee asked a probative question. The hearing concluded at 1:30 p.m.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
Obozo/Biden plan; disarm the American people and establish a Marxist Gov’t.
There is a simple solution.
Cut the ATF budget appropriation 20% each year until ATF management solvers their own problems.
h/t George76
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Swat Raids Gone Bad Department:
heads up
more testimony from house hearing with ATF director
Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”
-Patrick Henry, Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution
They didn't have an arrest warrant, just a search warrant.
They formed up in the Walmart parking lot, the week before, do do this, but left when they found out that he wasn't home.
They could have kicked in his door and done the search warrant, then, without the need for 10 carloads of mall ninjas.
They needed him, to be home, for a photo op and if there was a shoot out, with him killed, all the better.
They were sending a message.
ATF to FFL license holders: this might happen to you, unless you get out of the business. Terrorism.
The government has to do this every so often to instill fear in the public.
As was said somewhere in the past, “You do not punish a man for his crimes. You punish him so OTHERS will not commit the crime.”
Not quite, they needed him to be home for the hit to be successful.
We are, now, there.
More theater. Maybe the Republicans will issue a stronhly worded letter.
Yes, that was my point.
Our government institutions cover for one another. If we had a true ‘justice’ system Ashli Babbitt’s murderer and others like him would be in prison for life. How many U.S. citizens have been murdered by policing agencies who know they can use deadly force with impunity? We repeatedly see the courts and ‘independent investigators’ cover for these jack-booted thugs and their bosses.
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there are not enough criminals, tyrants make them. Tyrants declare so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.. ~Ayn Rand..
This is where I absolutely fault the GOP and their failure to do a damn thing about government overreach.
If the ATF or the FBI or any other government agecy refuse to answer their questions then cut their funding to zero until such time as they do.
here’s the link again:
ATF Director Grilled About Malinowski
Killing During Heated Hearing
May 24, 2024; JPFO by Lee Williams
https://jpfo.org/articles-2024/atf-director-grilled-about-malinowski.htm
well worth the read, imo
check picture in article
I saw in my mind’s eye Maer Malinkowski standing up behind that little government POS weasel Stevie “No Ballz” Dettelbach with a nail-studded baseball bat and going Bear Jew on him.
Just more B.S. from the Republicans who refuse to take any real action to Hold the ATF and the FBI accountable for their illegal actions.
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