Steven Dettelbach, one of only two people ever to be confirmed by the Senate to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, stepped down from the ATF last month, ahead of Donald Trump starting his second term, and there was uncertainty about who, if anyone, the Republican would chose to succeed him.
Evidently, the president has settled on an unexpected choice. NBC News reported:
President Donald Trump’s newly-confirmed FBI director, Kash Patel, is expected to take on another top law enforcement role in the administration as head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to a White House official and two other sources familiar with the plan. Patel’s appointment could be made official as soon as next week with a swearing-in ceremony, the sources said.
In case this isn’t obvious, to serve as ATF director requires Senate confirmation, and Patel hasn’t even been nominated for this second position. If Patel is sworn in anyway, it would presumably be in an acting capacity — unless the president and his team have some kind of fresh extrajudicial power grab in mind.
NBC News’ report added that ATF, a law enforcement agency housed in the Department of Justice, “is responsible for enforcing federal laws regarding the illegal use, sale and trafficking of firearms and explosives, as well as the illegal diversion of alcohol and tobacco products.”
Leading the agency is a difficult and full-time job. If the NBC News report is correct, it will nevertheless be done by an official who has earned a reputation as a prolific conspiracy theorist who already has a difficult and full-time job leading the FBI.
It’s also worth emphasizing for context that while Patel had no meaningful experience at the FBI before Trump tapped him to lead the bureau, Patel also has no background whatsoever at the ATF or with its work. Or put another way, nominating the conspiracy theorist to lead the bureau was ridiculous, and asking him to also simultaneously lead the ATF adds insult to injury.
But let’s not brush past the fact that Trump keeps asking assorted officials to take on multiple jobs at the same time.
As we recently discussed, we saw some of this in the Republican’s first term. In early 2017, for example, the president tapped then-Rep. Mick Mulvaney to serve as the White House budget director. In time, the South Carolinian also led the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And served as White House chief of staff. And became the U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland.
To be sure, it became amusing to see just how many hats Mulvaney ended up wearing, but what was especially notable about his tenure was that he occasionally wore more than one hat at the same time. For most of 2018, for example, he led both the Office of Management and Budget and the CFPB. In 2019, Mulvaney was both the White House budget director and the president’s chief of staff. It’s apparently now happening again. Patel will reportedly lead the FBI and the ATF. Marco Rubio, meanwhile, is the secretary of state, but Trump also put him in charge of the National Archives in an acting capacity. Doug Collins was named the secretary of veterans affairs and the acting leader of the Office of Special Counsel and the Office of Government Ethics. Russell Vought is the White House budget director, but that didn’t stop Trump from also tapping Vought to serve as the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, mirroring Mulvaney’s dual responsibilities from eight years ago. Ric Grenell was recently named the interim director of the Kennedy Center, which is a job he’ll apparently do while also working as the “Presidential Envoy for Special Missions,” working in “some of the hottest spots around the World, including Venezuela and North Korea.” It’s hard not to wonder who’ll soon be added to this growing list. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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