The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is under fire after reportedly breaking the law to inflate status and salaries of administrative staffers.
According to Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, ATF improperly and deliberately misclassified thousands of administrative positions as “law enforcement” for decades, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
"According to legally protected disclosures made to our offices, ATF management was notified as early as 2018 that the agency’s decades-long practice of misclassifying non-law enforcement positions as law enforcement, including leadership positions, was in violation of the law, but ATF failed to take corrective action," Grassley and Ernst wrote in a letter to ATF Director Steven Dettelbach. Attorney General Merrick Garland was also sent a copy of the letter.
The misclassification was brought to the attention of ATF leadership by whistleblowers and was ignored.