Grassley, Ernst Want ATF Officials Ousted Over ‘Illegal’ Scheme to Boost Pay

A pair of Republican senators are calling out what they describe as a pattern of abuse and fraud within the ATF that started under Joe Biden’s watch, but allegedly continues to this day. 

As Fox News reports, Iowa senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst have penned a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her to investigate and take action against ATF employees who, according to the agency’s Internal Affairs Division and an audit by the Office of Personnel Management, inflated salaries and wasted taxpayer dollars by intentionally misclassifying the status of some workers within the agency. 

In their letter, Grassley and Ernst singled out two supervisory agents, Lisa Boykin and Ralph Bittelari, who they say the IAD audit shows not only allowed the continuance of this misclassification scheme – despite knowing it violated OPM directives and standards – but also retaliated against whistleblowers trying to expose it. 

Furthermore, the senators claim, Boykin and Bittelari were promoted before President Joe Biden left office and continue to work at the ATF under President Donald Trump.

In one instance, according to the senators, Bittelari and Boykin decided to move forward with the relocation of an ATF law enforcement officer in Phoenix to an administrative position at ATF headquarters in Washington, D.C., despite OPM identifying the position as misclassified. The IAD report allegedly shows Bittelari initially agreed to rescind the job offer, but following a subsequent conversation with Boykin decided to move forward with the unauthorized relocation anyway. Furthermore, the senators alleged in their letter that the IAD report shows Bittelari attempted to hide the “unlawful assignment” by submitting the promotion directly to payroll for processing.

Grassley and Ernst also highlighted misconduct within the ATF’s Workforce Wellness and Services Division. According to the senators, Bittelari tried to classify the chief of the WWSD as law enforcement, and when a subordinate documented the attempt and warned other employees that what he was trying to do violated the directives of the Office of Personnel Management they were threatened with insubordination. 

According to the senators, the OPM concluded that the scheme to promote employees and misclassify their status cost taxpayers about $20 million over a five year period, though they add that whistleblowers say that number is “substantially understated.”

They assert that OPM failed to fully account for the millions of taxpayer dollars ATF wasted on relocation costs and expenses of moving favored law enforcement officers from their field offices to and from misclassified positions located at ATF HQ in Washington, D.C. Further, whistleblowers alleged that potentially hundreds of ATF law enforcement officers in ATF field offices across the nation continue to occupy administrative positions and unlawfully receive enhanced law enforcement benefits, putting the actual cost to taxpayers potentially in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Accordingly, we request you also conduct a comprehensive review of ATF Field Offices to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not wasted on unlawfully paying enhanced law enforcement benefits to ATF employees performing administrative duties.

Grassley and Ernst say both Boykin and Bittelari “engaged in gross and substantial waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct at the expense of taxpayers in furtherance of ATF’s illegal misclassification scheme, retaliated against whistleblowers for exposing it, and then were promoted for it,” but they also assert that the ATF’s Internal Affairs Division unconvered evidence that the pair “engaged in what can be described as potential criminal misconduct by knowingly falsifying and fraudulently certifying government records, defrauding taxpayers, and attempting to conceal their illegal activity by retaliating and attempting to silence whistleblowers.”

Both senators are asking Bondi to axe Boykin and Bittelari from any “leadership positions” at DOJ or ATF, while also seeking protections for the whistleblowers who have come forward to attest to the abuses that they’ve seen. According to Grassley and Ernst several whistleblowers say that they’ve suffered as a result of their actions, including being demoted and subjected to “repeated attempts by ATF and JMD management to discredit their reputations and ruin their careers.” 

The pair conclude their letter to Bondi by declaring that the Attorney General has the power “bring accountability”, noting that without it nothing will change before challenging her to take action. 

If their findings are accurate, then neither Boykin nor Bittelari should be drawing a paycheck from Uncle Sam, and the DOJ should launch an investigation to find out just how deep the rot goes across the agency. It sounds like Grassley and Ernst’s findings may just be the tip of the iceberg, and there’s more malfeasance that has not yet been officially documented.