A former Iowa police chief made numerous false statements to obtain machine guns for his private gun stores, a federal appeals court held in affirming his convictions for violating federal firearm laws.
Brad Wendt, formerly police chief of the small town of Adair, also owned two gun stores in Adair and Denison. From 2018 to 2022, Wendt wrote letters seeking federal authorization to purchase 90 machine guns for the two-man department, either for department use or for demonstration for possible future use, although not all of the sales were completed.
The letters attested the weapons were not being purchased for resale but Wendt in fact resold many of them, often in a matter of months, for nearly $80,000 in profit.
Wendt was arrested in 2022 and faced 15 federal charges. At trial in 2024, he was convicted on 11 counts, including false statement and conspiracy charges as well as illegal possession of a machine gun he brought to an off-duty public machine gun shoot sponsored by his private gun store.
On Tuesday, March 3, the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld his convictions on all but the final count, ruling the law is ambiguous as to whether a police chief had lawful authority to use a department-owned machine gun as he did.
Wendt was sentenced to five years in prison after his trial, consisting of concurrent 60-month terms for each of his 11 convictions. His attorney Nick Klinefeldt, though, said the machine gun possession charge was the most serious conviction against Wendt, and that he expects the Bureau of Prisons will recalculate Wendt’s time served and likely approve him for immediate release.
“Brad Wendt was a good police chief who served his community with honor and hard work,” Klinefeldt said. “We are looking forward to him being able to get his life back and will be reviewing next steps.”
Police chief sought rotary minigun for town of 800
Over the course of Wendt’s trial, the jury saw numerous social media messages in which Wendt bragged about being able to use his police job to authorize gun sales to himself and discussed stockpiling weapons for resale before leaving his position.
Jurors also heard questions about the suitability of the weapons sought for small-town police work, including Wendt’s repeated efforts to obtain a M134 rotary minigun capable of firing multiple rounds per second, usually from a mount on a military helicopters.
Wendt testified that all of the transfer letters he wrote were for legitimate police purposes. At one point he said, “You have to determine if (a gun) is suitable or not suitable, and how would you do that without a demonstration?”
Court: ‘overwhelming evidence’ Wendt made false statements
The federal appellate panel found that argument entirely unpersuasive.
“The false statements here are that the machine guns were either for the official use of the Adair Police Department or that the machine guns were to be demonstrated to the Adair Police Department, so they could evaluate a future purchase,” Judge Ralph Erickson wrote. “Wendt’s convictions are supported by overwhelming evidence that these unambiguous statements were false at the time he wrote them.”
But the court did find there was sufficient ambiguity to overturn Wendt’s conviction on the possession charge. While the machine gun shoot was held well outside Adair limits, while Wendt was off-duty and out of uniform, the court found that Iowa law nonetheless arguably gave him the authority to decide where and how to use department-owned guns.
“A person of ordinary intelligence in Wendt’s position would not have fair notice that his possession of a machine gun registered to his police department at a machine gun shooting event was illegal,” Erickson wrote. “… Because thepublic authority exception as applied to Wendt in his capacity as Chief of Police is unconstitutionally vague, his conviction for possession of a machine gun … is vacated.”
William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com or 715-573-8166.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Former Iowa police chief’s machine gun convictions mostly upheld
Reporting by William Morris, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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