Trump Just Pardoned the Navy Sailor the Biden ATF Locked Up With Fake Evidence

Chiarascura image via Shutterstock
Chiarascura image via Shutterstock

A Navy sailor has been locked in a federal prison cell for three years over legal gun parts.

Six members of Congress demanded his release, and last night, President Trump finally answered them.

Trump signed his pardon overnight, and the reason the Biden ATF's own case fell apart will make you furious.

A Biden ATF Agent Rigged a Toy Gun to Send Adamiak to Prison

Patrick "Tate" Adamiak was a Navy Master-at-Arms working toward a commission in Naval Special Warfare.

He ran a side business on GunBroker selling roughly $10,000 a month in military surplus gear and gun parts that were completely legal to own.

The Biden ATF built its case against him using a confidential informant.

The government's informant used to run a machinegun shop himself, and turning on Adamiak earned him $8,000 and a break on his own pending charges.

Prosecutors first charged him with 33 machinegun counts, then dropped that indictment and came back with just one machinegun charge and four destructive device counts once the original case started falling apart.

A jury convicted Adamiak in June 2023, and the judge sentenced him to 20 years.

The centerpiece of the government's case was a toy submachine gun.

Jeffrey Bodell, a Firearms Enforcement Officer with the Biden ATF, told the jury he examined a Sten Mk II replica and found it to be a real, functioning machinegun.

What Bodell didn't tell the jury up front was that he modified the toy himself, swapping in an actual STEN barrel and action before he ever tested it.

The toy's factory-made receiver was never designed to accept a real STEN magazine at all.

Bodell is still an ATF Firearms Enforcement Officer today.

He testified that for the last year and a half he has been "operating a federal testing lab that 3D prints firearms."

ATF Director Robert Cekada declined to comment on Bodell's employment status, citing personnel confidentiality.

Adamiak spent the years since his conviction inside Federal Correctional Institution Fort Dix, appealing a case built on a toy the government rigged to fire.

The Congressional Pressure Campaign That Led to Last Night's Pardon

Six members of Congress – Jen Kiggans, Eli Crane, Eric Burlison, Paul Gosar, Rob Bresnahan Jr., and Daniel Webster – sent a letter demanding fair consideration for a commutation request they filed on Adamiak's behalf.

Crane had already grilled ATF Director Cekada about the case directly during a congressional hearing.

The lawmakers laid the blame exactly where it belonged.

Adamiak's prosecution happened under the Biden administration, they wrote, while the Biden ATF was running what they called "expanded and draconian regulatory approaches" against gun owners who broke no laws.

The request sat for months, and when Trump denied hundreds of other pardon applications in one batch, Adamiak's name was conspicuously missing from the list.

His father, Dave Adamiak, told reporters he still had hope his son might come home.

According to our sources, that hope became a signature on Thursday night, with the announcement coming today.

Adamiak still had 16 years left on his sentence when it happened.

National Association for Gun Rights president Dudley Brown broke the news writing “Great news about Tate Adamiak coming any second now,” on his X account Friday.  

NAGR’s Ryan Flugaur celebrated the win as well, thanking National Gun Rights’ members for putting their signatures on the group’s petitions in support of Adamiak, “Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to make these pardons happen, especially @gunrights members for signing thousands of petitions and @POTUS for listening. This is a great day!”

SAF founder Alan Gottlieb said he was thrilled Adamiak was finally free, and put it in the plainest terms possible: "He did nothing wrong and broke no law."

Defense attorney Calum Welch, who worked the case, said he "couldn't be prouder to have played a small role in his getting home."

Adamiak was still being processed for release Friday and unavailable to comment, but people close to him say he plans to keep fighting the underlying case in court as a free man.

What Adamiak's Pardon Means for Every Other Case Like His

Trump has done this before.

He pardoned Kentucky militia member Dan Wilson for his role in the January 6 riot, then went back and signed a second pardon after courts refused to erase Wilson's separate gun convictions too.

The White House argued those firearms would never have surfaced without the broader investigation, so the pardon should cover them.

Adamiak's case runs the same logic in reverse – a gun conviction built entirely on Biden ATF conduct that should never have survived a courtroom.

The Biden ATF built felony machinegun charges out of legal gun parts using paid informants and in-house "experts" for years.

Bodell's toy Sten gun is exhibit A for how thin that evidence really was.

Trump didn't stop with Adamiak.

The same day, he pardoned Louisiana gun dealer George Peterson, who spent two years in federal prison after ATF agents found an unregistered homemade suppressor in his bedroom safe.

Two pardons in one day for two men buried by the same kind of NFA technicalities is not a coincidence.

The Biden ATF swore under oath that a toy was a machinegun, and last night the President of the United States told the country it wasn't.

Cekada still has to answer for why a man who rigged evidence to win a conviction kept his badge for three more years while Adamiak sat in a cell.

Every gun owner who has ever sold a legal part on GunBroker just got proof that the difference between a hobby and a 20 year sentence can come down to which ATF agent gets assigned to the case.

Sources:

  • Lee Williams, "Special Report: ATF Lied to Convict Sailor Now Serving 20 Years in Prison for Selling Legal Gun Parts," Second Amendment Foundation, January 29, 2025.
  • Lee Williams, "Firearm 'Expert' Who Testified a Toy Was a Machinegun Still Working for ATF," TheGunWriter, 2026.
  • Lee Williams, "President Trump Denies Hundreds of Pardon Requests, but Not Adamiak's," TheGunWriter, 2026.
  • Tom Knighton, "Lawmakers Want Adamiak Freed," Bearing Arms, June 10, 2026.
  • "Trump Re-Pardons a Jan. 6 Defendant to Erase Unrelated Gun Conviction," Yahoo News, November 2025.
  • Lee Williams, "BREAKING: Tate Adamiak Pardoned," TheGunWriter, September 4, 2026.
  • "Trump Pardons Tate Adamiak and George Peterson," Ammoland, September 4, 2026.

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