ATF Director Steven Dettelbach prepares to testify before the House Judiciary
Committee Thursday. (Screenshot courtesy of House Judiciary Committee.)
ATF agents cut off the electricity to Bryan Malinowski's Little Rock home before executing their search warrant March 19.
None of the agents wore body cameras, and they covered Malinowski's doorbell camera with tape to hide their actions. Fifty-seven seconds after kicking down the front door, Malinowski was fatally shot in the head. His wife, Maer Malinowski, was pulled out of her home wearing only bedclothes and forced into the back of a squad car, where she was held against her will for four hours in 34-degree weather, despite her frequent pleas to check on her dying husband.
"If that isn't weaponization of government, I don't know what is," Congressman Jim Jordan, R-OH, said Thursday morning, during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, which he chairs.
The hearing, which was held in the Rayburn House Office Building and was called "Oversight of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives," lasted more than three hours. ATF Director Steven Dettelbach was the only witness.
Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee tried to force Dettelbach to answer questions about Malinowski's killing. However, as expected, he declined to answer and tap-danced around the members' questions, citing the ongoing criminal investigation by Arkansas officials as an excuse. .....