'Does The Hypocrisy Not Ring Pretty Loud?': Matt Gaetz Questions Lawyer For Bryan Malinowski Family

7 months ago

At today's House Weaponization of the Federal Government Committee hearing, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) questioned Bryan Malinowski's family's attorney Bud Cummins.

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript

Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00 Mr. Gates for five minutes. Mr. Kloegner, what is the ATF's zero tolerance policy?

00:05 It is a change in how they used to enforce violations of the law against FFLs to no

00:13 longer allow them to fix errors or to improve their compliance. It has no tolerance for these

00:18 typos and wants to revoke their licenses. And give me a flavor of the type of errors that might

00:24 have previously resulted in the ATF working with a license holder and now would result in the agency

00:32 trying to revoke that license. I'd love to give you the examples that fly in the face of what

00:36 the zero tolerance policy says it is, which is prohibited persons and background checks and

00:41 things like that. But the problem is my client did none of those things that are even stated in the

00:46 zero tolerance policy and they're still falling subject to getting revoked. We can talk about a

00:50 typo of an abbreviation of somebody's name when they shouldn't have done that. We can talk about

00:55 accidentally listing United States as the country instead of paying attention to the box saying

01:01 county, things like that. Well, Ms. Sampson gave testimony that these are essential, that these are

01:07 necessary regulations to enforce at the finest point. Do you have a response to that testimony?

01:15 Some are essential. I agree. The background check requirements, the identification requirements,

01:20 and making sure we know who the purchaser is, that they're not a prohibited person,

01:24 but that's not what this exact case I'm dealing with has to do with at all. There are no prohibited

01:29 persons involved here. There were no missing background checks. There were no missing

01:32 anything that would actually affect public safety. In the case I'm aware of in my district,

01:38 the error wasn't even made by the license holder. The error was made by the Florida Department of

01:43 Law Enforcement because they were charged with a certain feature of the background check. And so,

01:49 if a license holder has to rely on a state entity to do some portion of the check and they make an

01:57 error, that certainly shouldn't result in the license holder experiencing a revocation action,

02:02 should it? We agree. It should not. And yet, that's the circumstance. And I'm wondering just

02:07 how you hear that testimony, Mr. Cummins, as you deal with representing a family that's dealt with

02:14 such loss at the hands of such a grave error. Does the hypocrisy not ring pretty loud?

02:25 I've been in all sides of this. I've been a United States attorney. I've prosecuted more gun crimes

02:31 than probably many prosecutors in the country. It was the number one priority in the Bush

02:35 administration to prosecute gun crime, not administrative gun crime, real gun crime. People

02:42 that are out committing crimes with guns, and we prosecuted a whole bunch of them.

02:46 I've also been a defense attorney, and I've been with families of people that are in prison. I've

02:51 been to prisons and met with people. Anybody that thinks that the guns that are being sold

02:57 in private sales are driving the level of crime we're seeing in our community,

03:02 on the list of things that are driving the level of crime we see in our community,

03:07 private gun sales is way down at the bottom. And there's a great number of other things that

03:12 aren't being discussed here at all that have to be driving it more than you.

03:16 I want you to be able to respond specifically to Ms. Sampson's testimony that guns make their way

03:21 from the legal marketplace to the illegal marketplace. Because it seems to me hearing

03:26 that testimony that then you wouldn't attack the people who are trying to legally engage

03:32 in the legal transfer of firearms, right? You would go after the people engaging in the illegal

03:37 conduct. But what's your reaction to that testimony?

03:40 I agree with that. I think gun crimes are committed by people, not guns, and we need

03:44 to focus on the people that are committing the crimes. And we need to be asking ourselves,

03:49 why is this person a criminal? What's their background? I know the answers to a lot of

03:54 those questions because I've been living it for 35 years. But it doesn't really have much

03:58 to do with where they acquired the firearm. And everything we know about the law,

04:01 for someone to be a criminal, they have to have the intent to commit a crime. They have to have

04:07 the mens rea, right? And do you worry as you look at some of the ways in which these laws are being

04:14 weaponized against people that we're getting away from someone actually wanting to commit a crime,

04:20 and indeed people are experiencing this really, really harsh regulatory action

04:25 when they want to be legally compliant?

04:28 I would suggest that the tactics that were used in the Malinowski search would be incompetent

04:35 and reckless if it was a very serious crime. It's even much more offensive because this is not a

04:41 serious crime that they suspected. It's probably the lowest level crime that would ever be drugged

04:46 into a United States Attorney's office.

04:48 So why did this happen? Is this just to send a message? Is this someone's incompetence?

04:53 Do you wonder about that?

04:56 I wonder about it. And that's probably a question for this committee to answer, not me. But I'm

05:01 certainly concerned about it, and it makes this tragedy even harder to take, to think that it

05:07 might be politically motivated or for some other reason.

05:11 Thank you. I see I'm out of time. I yield back.

05:13 Gentlemen, time's expired. I now recognize Ms. Plaskett for five minutes.

05:17 Thank you very much. First, I want to say it's very interesting that

05:21 we keep talking about the fact that there were

'Does The Hypocrisy Not Ring Pretty Loud?': Matt Gaetz Questions Lawyer For Bryan Malinowski Family

Category

Transcript

Recommended