ATF/TREASURY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Trump administration has drafted plans to strip key authorities from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, senior administration officials said on Friday, an acknowledgment that the agency has all but abandoned its legacy of fighting liquor and tobacco smugglers… But the modern A.T.F. has focused its stagnant budget on violent crime and bombings, while tobacco smuggling — a little-known crime that costs the government billions in lost taxes each year — goes largely unenforced.
Under the Trump administration’s plan, the Treasury Department would inherit the authority to investigate tobacco and alcohol smuggling. The A.T.F. would need a new name. One possibility: the Bureau of Arson, Explosives and Firearms, or A.E.F.
The move would resolve a bureaucratic split that has existed for years. Treasury collects the taxes on cigarettes and liquor, but A.T.F. investigates efforts to evade those taxes.
The change is included in a draft of President Trump’s coming budget proposal, according to two senior administration officials. The plan envisions hiring roughly two dozen Treasury agents, plus auditors and support staff, the officials said. Congress would have to pass a law to reorganize the agencies…
A spokesman for the A.T.F. did not immediately comment. A Treasury Department spokesman did not respond to messages for comment.”
-Ali Watkins and Matt Apuzzo, “Trump Envisions an A.T.F. Without the A or T,” The New York Times online, Jan. 19, 2018