During a House Judiciary Committee hearing prior to the recess, Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) spoke about the ATF's decision to conduct a no-knock raid on Bryan Malinowski's home that resulted in him being killed by ATF agents.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 We will now proceed to a five-minute question.
00:02 A gentleman from North Dakota is recognized for five minutes.
00:05 Early morning hours, riot shields, probably a no-knock warrant, but either way a full-on
00:14 Tommy tactical assault on a residential dwelling.
00:21 Mr. Cummings, you said in your opening statement, but where did Mr. Malinowski work?
00:26 He was the executive director of the Little Rock Airport.
00:28 Do you know if firearms are permitted at the Hillary Clinton National Airport?
00:32 To my knowledge, it's like every other airport.
00:35 They do not allow you to carry firearms in the airport.
00:39 To your knowledge, had Mr. Malinowski ever been accused of bringing firearms to work?
00:44 Not to my knowledge.
00:45 I'm not aware of him being accused of any misconduct at his job.
00:51 Would it stand to reason that if Mr. Malacoste had been driving into work or driving home
00:55 from work, he would not have brought a gun with him, given that it's a gun-free zone?
00:59 I think that's a fair assumption.
01:02 Do you think that in the process of executing their search warrant, the ATF would have been
01:08 able to get a copy of Mr. Malinowski's work schedule?
01:12 I think his work schedule was well known to the ATF.
01:15 And I want to be clear, because we're talking ATF and because we're talking firearms, this
01:22 is basically a licensing dispute.
01:24 Yes, sir.
01:25 And it's an alleged violation that the definition is subjective, and it's been actually litigated
01:35 quite a bit here recently, and it's become apparent that it's almost – every person
01:40 in this room could read it and come up with a different interpretation.
01:43 Mr. Graham, during your tenure at the ATF, were you ever involved in planning and execution
01:47 of search warrants?
01:48 Congressman, I have not.
01:51 Mr. Cummings, is your time as the U.S. Attorney – did you have a chance to review search
01:57 warrants?
01:58 Yes, sir.
01:59 When do you use no-knock warrants?
02:02 Let me stop.
02:03 What's the most dangerous kind of warrant to execute?
02:04 A no-knock warrant, when you kick the door and wake people up out of their beds when
02:08 they may have a gun nearby.
02:10 When's the worst time to execute that?
02:12 Probably at 6 a.m.
02:13 And if you're in charge as a U.S. Attorney or ATF supervisor or any of those things,
02:16 what's your number one concern when determining whether or not to execute a no-knock warrant?
02:21 Safety of the officer and safety of the public.
02:23 Was there anything – you had talked earlier about tracking devices.
02:28 Can you go through a little bit of this, of what they were doing prior to the night the
02:31 warrant was issued?
02:33 They had followed Mr. Malinowski around town and surveilled him on numerous occasions.
02:37 They ran agents in to do undercover buys at gun shows.
02:41 They'd taken pictures of him at the gun show.
02:47 It's breathtaking the amount of resources for an agency that claims budgetary constraints
02:53 that they put this many resources on a gun showcase.
02:59 I can think of 500 different ways in which this warrant could have been executed to protect
03:05 the law enforcement officer and protect the victim in this case.
03:09 I don't know what else you call them.
03:15 What is the stated reason for executing the no-knock warrant?
03:19 I think in case law you would look for exigent circumstances.
03:25 They might be risk of escape.
03:27 They might be destruction of evidence.
03:29 They might be danger to some other party that's in the house.
03:32 Of all the exigent circumstances I'm aware of that have ever been discussed in any case,
03:37 none of them existed here and that was well known.
03:39 Likelihood of the evidence being – I mean surveillance.
03:42 You can flush drugs.
03:43 Yeah.
03:44 Surveillance is used a lot, utilized a lot in drug cases.
03:48 They know somebody had delivered at midnight.
03:51 They know it's getting farmed out the next day.
03:53 So with all of this information and all of the things you know about the case, have they
03:57 stated any exigent circumstance for utilizing the no-knock or utilizing this type of enforcement
04:03 of the warrant?
04:04 To my knowledge, DOJ has released the affidavit that supported the search warrant and has
04:09 called me and Senator Tom Cotton to tell us that there was no body cameras used that day
04:14 and that's the only statement they've made about this case.
04:17 I mean I think we need to just take a step back here and recognize if this was anything
04:22 else other than ATF and firearms, people would be apoplectic about how this warrant was set
04:29 up but because it involves something that has a political reason – but there's a
04:34 person dead.
04:35 Somebody's dead because the ATF decided to execute a warrant in the most unprofessional,
04:42 irresponsible and dangerous way.
04:45 And I think that oftentimes law enforcement have a very difficult job.
04:49 The number one concern is the safety of the officer.
04:53 But the reality of this is this was executed for reasons that make no procedural sense.
04:59 They make no safety sense and somebody is dead because they decided they wanted to go
05:04 into a house at 1am of a known gun owner for the purpose of making I can think of anything
05:10 else other than a political statement.
05:12 Thank you for representing the family.
05:14 Thank you for being here today.
05:15 The ATF has a history of doing these things with warrants and it has to stop.
05:21 And with that I yield back.
05:22 Mr. Chairman, I have a unanimous consent motion.
05:24 Gentleman's recognized.
05:25 Gentleman yields back.
05:26 Gentleman's recognized.
05:27 I'd like to introduce the search warrant affidavit.