House lawmakers sparred with one another Wednesday over a pre-dawn raid by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms which led to the recent death of Bryan Malinowski, who was executive director of Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, Arkansas.
The GOP lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government scrutinized how ATF agents on March 19 approached Malinowski’s home in Chenal Valley, Arkansas, and broke down his door to serve a warrant.
The raid sparked a gunfight between the agents and Malinowski, 53, who later died from gunshot wounds he suffered.
The hearing set the stage for ATF Director Steven Dettelbach to testify Thursday before the same panel.
“Upon hearing the commotion, and fearful of a home intrusion, Mr. Malinowski woke and prepared to defend his family. Mr. Malinowski encountered what he and his wife believe to be home intruders and exchange of gunfire ensued,” House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan said.
Mr. Jordan questioned whether the ATF followed proper protocol during the execution of the search warrant.
Justice Department policy and President Biden’s executive order 14074 require ATF agents, including those who conducted the search warrant on the Malinowski residence, to wear active body cameras during the execution of that warrant.
The ATF confirmed to the Malinowski family that the agents were not wearing body cameras during the raid, which would be considered a violation of department policy, Mr. Jordan said.
The top Democrat on the subcommittee, Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands, said that Republicans’ proposals to cut ATF funding are the reason the agents were not wearing body cameras the night they raided Malinowski’s home.
“I want to say it’s very interesting that we keep talking about the fact that there were no body cams on the ATF officers that were there to execute that warrant,” she said. “But the very thing that they’re trying to do, which is to eliminate the ATF, is the reason that they don’t have body cams because they didn’t give them the funding for it.”
Bud Cummins, the attorney for Malinowski’s widow, released videos from the home’s door camera of the ATF raid up until agents covered the lens with black tape. According to an unsealed affidavit, Malinowski was suspected of illegally selling firearms without a federal firearms license.
The warrant alleged that Malinowski sold 150 firearms between May 2021 and February 2024 and that six of those guns would eventually be used in crimes.
Undercover agents also purchased firearms from him, who appeared as an unlicensed vendor at a gun show.
Lawmakers also debated whether ATF agents complied with the Justice Department policy on no-knock entries. According to the ATF affidavit, the warrant was not a no-knock warrant, but Mr. Cummins, a former U.S. attorney, testified that the lack of body camera footage and the agents’ covering the lens of the door camera make that conclusion difficult to verify.
“Nobody disputes that when law enforcement is fired upon, that they have a right to fire back. The point is that everything that created that situation was incompetent, unnecessary and reckless,” Mr. Cummins said.
He said the ATF defied the law because Fourth Amendment cases that allow either a no-knock or what can be called a “tap and go” type entries by law enforcement, with no real waiting period for someone to come to the door, are only justified by exigent circumstances.
“This was a completely illegal search because of the forced entry and the lack of time; they gave the occupants of a fairly large home to get up at six in the morning,” he said. “The law requires them to wait for it enough time for a reasonable amount of time for someone to come to the door and admit them in.”
Republicans compared the Malinowski case, to the objection of some Democrats, to the 2020 Breonna Taylor case.
In that incident, three plainclothes Louisville Metro Police Department officers investigating drug dealing knocked on the apartment door, forced entry and then engaged in a gunfight with Taylor’s boyfriend. Taylor was shot and killed by police.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.