ATF Agents Weren’t Wearing Body Cameras in Deadly Predawn Raid on Airport Official’s Home, DOJ Tells Sen Cotton

Last updated on August 7th, 2024 at 04:29 pm

The U.S. Department of Justice has told Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and John Boozman (R-AR) that federal agents were not wearing body cameras when they raided the home of Arkansas airport executive Bryan Malinowski and fatally shot him on March 19.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) agents forced their way into Malinowski’s home and shot him in a predawn raid after being granted a search warrant. The ATF had alleged Malinowski—who worked as the executive director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport—of unlicensed firearms dealing when they carried out the raid.

Malinowski’s family has been pressing the federal government for answers ever since the deadly raid, and have requested access to body-worn camera footage that may have recorded the actions of the agents involved in the raid. Their effort to obtain this body camera footage has now seen a setback; the ATF agents may not have been wearing any such cameras.

“The Department of Justice confirmed to us last night that the ATF agents involved in the execution of a search warrant of the home of Bryan Malinowski weren’t wearing body cameras,” Cotton and Boozman said in a press statement on Friday.

The lack of body-camera footage would appear to run afoul of an executive order President Joe Biden passed in May of 2022, promoting body cameras and requiring federal law enforcement agencies to standardize their use during arrests and searches.

“We will continue to press the Department to explain how this violation of its own policy could’ve happened and to disclose the full circumstances of this tragedy,” Cotton and Boozman said. “Mr. Malinowski’s family and the public have a right to a full accounting of the facts.”

The DOJ’s revelation about this apparent lack of body camera footage from the March 19 raid comes just days after the Malinowski family released their own footage, captured on a Ring doorbell camera, showing federal agents covering over the camera in the moments before they entered the airport executive’s home and fatally shot him.

It remains unclear what transpired in the moments after that federal agent snuffed out the doorbell camera.

It’s also unclear whether Malinowski understood who the armed men who arrived at his home were before they shot him. Bud Cummins, an attorney representing the Malinowski family, said there is not yet publicly available evidence demonstrating whether the federal agents knocked on his door or announced themselves prior to the fatal shooting.

Cummins has said Malinowski and his wife believed criminal intruders were breaking in that morning.

“He reached a corner in the hall and looked around it to see several unidentifiable figures already several steps inside his home,” Cummins told the Epoch Times earlier this month. “We do not know who shot first but it appears that Bryan shot approximately three times at a decidedly low angle, probably at the feet of the intruders who were roughly 30 feet away.”

Cummins said law enforcement officers are supposed to identify themselves when they’re serving a warrant, to avoid being misidentified as criminals and to give the subject of such a warrant the chance to comply peacefully. It was counterproductive, Cummins has said, for federal agents to have covered the doorbell camera if they intended to clearly identify themselves and avoid a deadly confrontation, as happened on March 19.

“We don’t have all the evidence,” Cummins said earlier this month. “The evidence we have tends to show that the search was not conducted legally.”

The ATF’s search warrant focused on allegations Malinowski had transferred firearms at area gun shows without a license and without conducting background checks with recipients.

It’s not necessarily clear that Malinowski was engaged in illegal activity even if he did transfer those firearms without being a Federal Firearms License-holder. The ATF’s own policy guidance states that “a person may transfer a firearm to an unlicensed resident of their state, provided the transferor does not know or have reasonable cause to believe the transferee is prohibited from receiving or possessing firearms under federal law.”

Whether a person is engaged in the types of firearms transfers where licensing isn’t required, or whether they are “engaged in the business” of firearms sales requiring an FFL, has also been ambiguous. Earlier this month, the DOJ and ATF began advancing a new rule that would expand the definition of who is “engaged in the business” of firearms sales to all individuals transferring firearms primarily for profit.