Kash Patel, the nominee for U.S. President Donald Trump, serves as director of the FBI, who was on January 30, 2025 at Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. Capitol Hill testified at the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing.
Evelyn Hawkstan | Reuters
The Justice Department official said Saturday that new FBI Director Kash Patel is expected to be appointed as the acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Guns and Explosives.
The official said Patel could be sworn in next week, putting Patel in charge of unusual arrangements for two of the Justice Department’s largest agencies, raising questions about the director’s future, which has long attracted conservatives, the official said. Party anger.
Justice Department officials discussed the conditions for the move anonymously before the public announcement. White House officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday night.
Patel served as FBI director Friday after winning Senate approval, despite Democrats fearing Trump allies overhaul the FBI’s plans.
The ATF is an independent agency with approximately 5,500 employees responsible for enforcing U.S. laws on firearms, explosives and arson cases. It is responsible for licensing federal gun dealers, tracking guns used in crimes, and analyzing intelligence in shooting investigations.
The move was first reported by ABC News.
The news comes days after Attorney General Pam Bondi fired the top ATF lawyers. Bondy said in a Fox News interview on Friday that she fired lead attorney Pamela Hicks because the agency is “targeting gun owners.” Hicks, who has been a Justice Department attorney for more than 20 years, said in social media posts that being the ATF chief counselor was the “highest honor” of her career.
Conservatives have long opposed the role of the ATF in regulating guns and have recommended the shutdown of the agency. Under the Biden administration, the ATF advanced new regulations aim to combat ghost guns and require thousands of gun dealers to conduct background checks on buyers outside of gun show or brick-and-mortar stores.
In executive order earlier this month, the president Donald Trump Instructed the Attorney General to review all actions taken by the Biden administration against guns to “evaluate ongoing violations of our citizens’ Second Amendment rights.”
Gun safety groups have raised alarms for putting Patel in charge of the FBI, and gun control group Brady called him a “known gun rights extremist.” The gun rights group U.S. gun owner called his FBI director’s confirmation “a major victory for gun owners and constitutional rights advocates nationwide.”
The last confirmed ATF director was former federal prosecutor Steve Dettelbach, who led the agency from July 2022 to last month. He was the first confirmed director since 2015, as neither the Republican nor the Democratic administration has been able to obtain nominees through a politically damaging process.
