“The way to respond to a search warrant is to allow your house to be searched and to cooperate.” — Rep. Dan Goldman

On March 19, the ATF, accompanied by members of the Little Rock Police Department, raided the home of Bryan Malinowski.  Malinowski was the executive director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock.  He had no criminal record and did not even know that he was under investigation.  The announced reason for the raid was to execute a search warrant.  The actual reason was to deliver a message to American gun owners that the ATF has the power to end their lives.  This was an example of premeditated murder.  A week prior to the raid, the ATF had assembled to carry out the raid; this raid was canceled allegedly because Malinowski was not home, and it was necessary for him to be there in order for him to set an example.

There are numerous reasons to why this raid appears to be an execution.  Ten vehicles pulled up to Malinowski’s home.  At 06:02:46 a.m., an hour before sunup, agents in full SWAT gear approached the front door.  An agent put a piece of tape over the doorbell camera lens.  According to Rep. Jim Jordan, the ATF also apparently killed electricity to the home.  None of the government participants were wearing required body cameras.  This was a “no knock” raid.  Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco wrote a directive limiting the circumstances in which agents may seek to enter dwellings pursuant to a warrant without complying with the knock and announce rule because of the risk posed to both law enforcement and civilians.  This requirement was announced two years ago. Agents knocked down Malinowski’s front door.  Malinowski awoke, loaded a pistol and headed for the front door.  He reportedly fired a few shots at the intruder’s feet to drive them back out the front door.  An ATF agent was hit in the foot during this effort.  The ATF responded by shooting Malinowski in the head.  The entire affair lasted only 57 seconds.  At 06:03:43 a.m. agents dragged Mrs. Malinowski into the front yard. She was barefoot and wearing her night clothing.  The temperature was 34 degrees.  They locked her in the backseat of a car and detained her there for four hours while refusing to allow her to use a neighbor’s bathroom.  The humiliation of spouses is apparently an integral part of this process.

Why would it not be unreasonable to conclude that this was a premeditated execution?  Rep. Kelly Armstrong pointed out that “Somebody made a leadership decision in order to execute a warrant in the most dangerous way possible.”  He concluded, “They chose to implement a warrant in a way that absolutely maximized the risk of harm both to the person being served the warrant on and to the officers serving the warrant.”  Rep. Troy Nehls asked, “When you kick down or break down a door and you don’t even announce who you are what do you think is going to happen?”  Rep. Darrell Issa concluded, “Malinowski . . . was killed doing what any normal citizen does when people enter their home in the darkness of night and they don’t know who they are.”  You do not need to be a psychic to know what the most likely outcome of such a raid would be.

Rep. Goldman claims that warrants are routinely done at 6 a.m..  According to him, this time is standard operating procedure.  There are certain advantages to conducting raids at this time.  Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, pointed out this:

The kind of night arrest described is, in fact, a favorite, because it has important advantages. Everyone living in the apartment is thrown into a state of terror by the first knock at the door.  The arrested person is torn from the warmth of his bed. He is in a daze, half-asleep, helpless, and his judgment is befogged. In a night arrest the State Security men have a superiority in numbers; there are many of them, armed, against one person who hasn’t even finished buttoning his trousers.

ATF Director Steven Dettelbach contends that the ATF conducts 11,000 of these raids per year; the ATF probably would not want it to be known that their SOP was written by the KGB. 

There are countless questions that need to be answered concerning this raid.  Dettelbach was an expert at evading answers.  Rep.Victoria Spartz chastised him for not answering questions because everything is under investigation.  She pointed out that the January 6 pipe bomb investigation has been going on for three years.  Undoubtedly the Malinowski investigation will last until most people have forgotten about it.  Before this is forgotten these questions should be answered:

Did a manager at ATF instruct Little Rock police not to wear body cameras in contradiction to their local policy?

Who authorized this “no knock” raid?

Dettelbach maintained “budget cuts” were to blame for the lack of body cameras; but how expensive are 11,000 raids?

Eventually the Malinowski family will be compensated for their loss, although the loss of a spouse can not really be compensated for.  The federal government paid the Weaver family $3.1 million for the murder of Randy Weaver’s wife and son at Ruby Ridge.  Vicki Weaver was shot by a sniper while she was holding an infant in her arms.  No one was disciplined for this fiasco and the government denied any wrongdoing.

John Dietrich is a freelance writer and the author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (Algora Publishing).  He has a Master of Arts Degree in International Relations from St. Mary’s University.  He is retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.  He is featured on the BBC’s program “Things We Forgot to Remember:” Morgenthau Plan and Post-War Germany.

Image: Public domain.