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 was not yet available for comment, as he was being out-processed Friday afternoon.
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.
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This story is part of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and is published here with their permission.
The really sad part is that no one from the AUSA or ATF will ever be held accountable for this travesty.
Well, the lead AUSA in the case dropped dead (epilepsy) shortly after the trial, so we can’t exactly fault the Trump DoJ for not taking action against her.
But I like to think karma played a role.
Anyway, this is great news, even if many of us believe it is long overdue. Now let’s see if Cekada will drop all his excuses for not discussing this case (they no longer apply) and tell us why FOE Bodell still has a job.
LKB, how can we get a lawsuit filed to get the recent 5th circuit GOA NFA ruling applied nationwide?
What will it take?
Right now, it’s wait and see what ATF issues in terms of guidance in response to the injunction and decision not to appeal. Further litigation may not be necessary.
We may well see ATF just announce that Form 4’s are no longer necessary for transfers of cans (or for transfers of SBR’s / SBS’s by people not in the business), nor are Form 1’s needed for home rolled cans, SBR’s, and SBS’s.
Of course, local and state laws still apply.
But for now, we’re still waiting to see what Cekada and his minions do.
Right now it would not matter if it was nation wide or not, and that’s because 15 states still require the form 4 process and the injunction does not affect state law so even those covered by the injunction now still need to go through the form 4 process to comply with their state law if their state law has a form 4 requirement. It would still be the same if it were applied nationwide and to everyone, the people in those 15 states are still stuck with the state law form 4 requirement – so it would never actually be nationwide as long as those state law form 4 requirements still exist.
“Anyway, this is great news, even if many of us believe it is long overdue.”
Agreed, nice to hear, but will he be getting his personal gun collection and store inventory returned to him?
“… until the ATF decided to target him personally and lie under oath about the facts of his case.”
“…the target of a “fishing expedition by the ATF.”
Pretty much standard operating procedure under the Biden tyranny.
“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.”
Aside from the other stuff they took, ya probably never going to get that back and I’ll bet most if not all of it is gone.
The AUSA head needs to roll on this one.
“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.”
Yep, they created a crime that did not exist by their self-interpretation/reinterpretation and essentially murdered Brian Malinowski because of it.
Pretty much standard operating procedure under the Biden tyranny.
People do not realize how close we came to Biden doing this for most things. He already had secret ‘KGB’ like investigations going on completely innocent people in the thousands, he tried to have the 4th amendment exception for ‘community caretaking’ expanded to give the government power to enter anyone’s home without warrant or cause and seize property (guns, but could have been anything with such a broad power) just by saying it was ‘community caretaking’, he censored millions of American citizens by colluding with social media companies. And even if Biden did not run for second term, if Harris had won it would have continued on to ‘stage 2’ and within 4 years we would have been living under a communist regime they called a ‘democracy’.
See above. The AUSA on the case is dead. What more can they do to her?
Yes, I know she’s dead.
That should have been …
“The AUSA head needed to roll on this one.”
Death got to her first though.
“What more can they do to her?”
They can make sure the entire world knows what she did. They can utterly destroy her reputation as a deterrent to anyone else thinking of doing what that POS did. They can take her pension away from her descendants, both to punish them for the crime and also to serve as another deterrent to others. They can make sure that every other agent working at ATF is terrified of being the next her. I refuse to accept this bulls**t you are spewing that her death means nothing can be done. F**k that.
Certainly, an after-action OIG investigation would be welcome, as it would likely name and shame all involved. But lotsa luck getting one started, now that Adamiak has been pardoned and the AUSA isn’t going to be able to do it again.
What you are suggesting simply just doesn’t happen with DoJ. Take away her pension from her survivors? Even if this is possible (it isn’t), she died years before any pension vested. Terrify other ATF agents? As long as FOE Bodell faces zero consequences for his perjury, not happening.
Cekada should crucify Bodell and make a very public example of him. Unfortunately, he is unwilling to even discuss this case in public, so I’m not sanguine about it happening.
“They can take her pension away from her descendants, both to punish them for the crime and also to serve as another deterrent to others.”
This is not possible because there are no descendants. Her name was Jessica Diane Aber, and as your typical Affluent Liberal White Woman who was born in Northern California, she was unmarried with no children as of her time of death at age 43 on March 22, 2025 .
Her reputation absolutely deserves to ground into dust in the forum of public opinion.
The other AUSA who assisted Aber on this case is named Victoria Liu. She is still alive and deserves all the hate and punishment that can be done to her.
I’m not tired of winning. And I’m still getting what I voted for.
President Trump has signed pardons for the following gun owners, convicted of unconstitutional ‘crimes’ under the National Firearms Act:
– Patrick “Tate” Adamiak
– George Peterson
– Jeremy Kettler
– Shane Cox
Can start a new war in the middle east after promising to do exactly the opposite, but takes 2 years to fix the worst case of injustice in the US. Trump has lost me.
Voting is ALWAYS choosing the lesser of two evils. Did you see where Romney’s former campaign manager is now giving tips to Dems on how to #Resist the Trump Admin?
I have no idea what losing you means. It’s best not to fall in love with any politician.
“Trump has lost me.”
Oh, dear.
He’ll never win re-election now.
(Venomous sarcasm).
Like Chris said just above, he has *wildly* exceeded expectations for me. Not even Regan has had such a positive impact on this great nation…
boo hoo. tell us how you feel about the nra.
The Best News You’ll Hear All Week, Tate Adamiak Has Been Pardoned.
“HUGE NEWS, President Trump has pardoned Patrick Tate Adamiak and several others who were the victims of the previous administration’s weaponized ATF and warfare on lawful and responsible gun owners nationwide. Washington Gun Law President, William Kirk, discusses what has happened and what it means moving forward, and all of it is good news. So learn more today and arm yourself with education.”
ht* tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iSpZhvJ0V4
How They’ll Use Component Bans to Keep You Disarmed.
Today, we are talking about component bans. Why? Because as you recall both of the assault weapon bans before the Supreme Court later this year defines an “assault weapon” by their external components. Washington Gun Law President, William Kirk, discusses the amicus brief filed by the National Association for Gun Rights and Texas Gun Rights, that dissects component bans and how unless the Court puts a stop to them, they will continue to be used by civilian disarmament states. That is, unless the Court encapsulates components into their opinion, the usual suspect states will continue to use these legislative schemes to disarm their citizens. So learn more today and arm yourself with education.
ht* tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=711ny9xQpHQ
BTW, I checked the federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator this morning, and it showed that Adamiak was not in BoP custody as of yesterday, so fortunately the BoP processed and released him within hours of his pardon.
You can’t trust that. He was in a military prison, those inmates are not tracked in the BOP system.
As typical, you are so full of BS.
Go to the BOP inmate locator. You’ll see *is* in the BOP Inmate database (Register Number: 95252-509 ), which meant he was in federal prison. You’ll also see that it shows he was no longer in BOP custody as of September 4.
He wasn’t convicted in a military court, he was convicted in a regular district court, and was serving his sentence in a federal prison (although he spent much of the time in local jails that hold federal prisoners when they have hearings and there isn’t a local federal lockup).
Nope.
Because he was not discharged from military service at time of conviction he had to be confined in military custody. Military custody are listed with inmate numbers in BOP but shown as not in custody becuase they are not in custody of the BOP in the regular BOP system but rather in military custody confinement.
He was confined at Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix, New Jersey, which is home to about 4,000 other federal inmates.
This is (is one of the places) where they send military members who are not discharged upon conviction.
Of not discharged they still have a service commitment for time. Until that service commitment time ends and they are discharged they are still in custody of military. The military accounts for him until then, he is legally in their custody so shows up as not in custody of BOP. He is legally in military confinement because of this, even though physically still in a federal prison where other prisoners are.
A person does not need to be convicted in a military court for this to happen. They just need to still have a service time commitment and not be discharged. It’s still federal confinement time though.
The BOP data base you looked at has been showing him as not in custody this whole time of confinement even though he has an inmate number. And thats becuase he is legally in military custody accountability because of his service commitment.
This has come up before. People have been pointing this out for his whole confinement that the BOP shows him as not in custody as of what ever date they look at it. Someone here also pointed this out earlier this year, in another comment section.
This is why it shows him as not in custody.
@ .40 cal
You are correct but just a little off on how you said it.
I used to work for the BOP, retired now. When a military member is sentenced to federal confinement by a non-military federal court and not discharged from the military – they are sent into the federal prison system and assigned an inmate number under the BOP system, but they are accounted for under military custody accountability because they are still actually in the military not having been discharged. This is why they show up in the BOP system with an inmate number but not in BOP custody, they are accounted for in a different system of military custody. They are not discharged from the military upon sentencing in a non-military federal court because the court can not direct they be discharged, so unless their military branch discharges them they are not discharged from military commitment.
It is still federal confinement in the BOP, just accounted for under a different system. The BOP system has shown Adamiak as having an inmate number but not in custody the entire time he has been confined, this is why.
“…so fortunately the BoP processed and released him within hours of his pardon.”
*Applause*.
Any chance he gets his guns, inventory, and ANY of his seized assets back? Can he sue for them?
“Any chance he gets his guns, inventory, and ANY of his seized assets back? Can he sue for them?”
The government often liquidates or destroys seized assets after conviction so there is a chance he will not get any of it back. If he does sue…if he wins the best he can hope for is a check for what ever the government valued these things at and that’s always going to be less than the ‘market’ value. For example, his antique currency collection was valued at thousands of dollars but the most the government would pay him for it is going to be way below the collectors market value.
I can’t help but feel his defense attorneys were woefully inept. Sadder, no one will face repercussions from this shitstorm.
The defense attorneys tried. The judge and AUSA kept the defense from putting their own experts on the stand and introducing exculpatory information. It was rigged against him from the very beginning.
“I can’t help but feel his defense attorneys were woefully inept”
Sadly, it was probably all he was able to afford at the time. That kind of representation costs BIG money…
He was heading for Seals. Is there even a small glimmer of hope he will once again serve our country in the most honorable way?
“Is there even a small glimmer of hope he will once again serve our country in the most honorable way?”
EXCELLENT question, if he was eligible, he may be unable to meet the physical demands of BUD/S after being locked up in the brig with no gym equipment for 5+ years. BUD/S is best handled by a guy in his 20s, he’s in his 30s by now. It’s been done, but rare.
Google SEAL ‘Hell Week’ for examples of WHY that is…