By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
Dave Adamiak got a call four years ago from an active-duty Navy Chief Petty Officer, or CPO, who knew his son, Patrick “Tate” Adamiak. Unfortunately, he cannot ever forget the horror of that call.
He was told that more than 40 law enforcement officers, mostly ATF and other federal agents, had kicked down the doors, searched Tate’s home and taken him into custody.
For Dave Adamiak, a retired K-12 shop teacher, it was cataclysmic.
“It derailed everything I’d been doing,” he said this week. “It still has.”
For his wife Senga, Tate’s mother, the results were much worse. She had been battling a serious illness. She died 30 days after her son’s arrest. She and Dave had been married for more than 41 years.
“It contributed to her death,” Dave Adamiak said. “It definitely did.”
For Tate’s father, one thing was certain: He knew his son did absolutely nothing wrong.
It became his mission and that of Tate’s friends and family to help clear his name and get the federal charges against him thrown out. Unfortunately for Tate and the entire Adamiak family, they had never dealt with the ATF before.
We have written more than 40 stories describing the ATF’s case. We’ve examined each piece of evidence, from two DEWAT grenade launchers to several toy machineguns, which ATF’s own expert claimed were real.
Our stories have been examined by a bevy of experts at multiple levels, and a vital point became crystal clear: Tate should not be behind bars. In fact, he should never have been charged much less sentenced to serve 20 years in prison. Until the ATF kicked down his doors, he had never been charged with a single crime.
Tate Adamiak was a gun collector who only sold legal gun parts until a paid ATF informant—who was facing his own felony charges—falsely reported that he had a Mk-19 grenade launcher. The informant’s lies led to the search warrant and ridiculous charges.
Adamiak is currently housed in a decaying federal prison at Fort Dix, New Jersey. FCI Fort Dix has both low and medium security federal inmates.
Tate was also thinking about his mother on Tuesday.
“She was a Broadway ballet dancer. I was supposed to see her April 7th and drive home to surprise her. Instead, I was in jail. I never got to see her that night and I never saw her again. She was the sweetest person in the world. I miss her cooking,” Adamiak said from prison Tuesday. “This whole thing has completely destroyed my life’s trajectory.”
Joe Biden’s ATF is long gone, thankfully. As we have said before, it is time to see what, if anything, ATF’s new leadership is willing to do for Patrick “Tate” Adamiak.
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