Kash Patel circulated an internal memo making clear that a recent report on plans to gut a Justice Department agency are ‘entirely false.’ The FBI Director, who is also currently acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol , Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), urged his employees to ignore the report and only listen to his directives, according to a copy of the memo obtained by DailyMail.com.

He said the FBI, ATF and other government agencies are in a ‘new era’ of accountability and transparency to the American people – and said those efforts would not be deterred by media reports. CNN cited three sources in an article last week who claimed they were briefed on plans to fire or remove as many as 1,000 agents from the ATF, which would reduce the agency’s workforce by more than one-third. ‘This ‘report’ is entirely false,’ the director insisted in a memo sent to ATF employees on Monday.

‘The fake news will NEVER be responsible for operational command authority over the ATF, we are,’ Patel continued in the message. ‘The brave men and women of the ATF who courageously dedicate themselves to protecting the American public will not have their security jeopardized by the media’s disinformation campaigns.’ He clarified: ‘When we make decisions, they will be final, regardless of the input of CNN or any other news organization.’

One person allegedly briefed on the matter told CNN, according to the report, that a few hundreds of these ATF agents would be reassigned to border-related criminal enforcement duty as FBI agents. An ATF spokeswoman disputed this classification and said in a Saturday statement that as part of a plan to address the southern border crisis, ‘the ATF will temporarily assign approximately 150 agents from existing field offices to other ATF field offices, where they will continue serving as ATF agents to support the surge initiative.’

Both the ATF and FBI fall under the purview of the Department of Justice, and both agencies are currently being run by Patel. ‘This is a new era for us all,’ Patel said in his memo. ‘[W]e will be working aggressively every single day to root out corruption at all levels of society and to give the public the open, fair, and honest kind of federal law enforcement team they deserve.’

‘You all are a critical part of that mission,’ he assured the ATF workforce. The ATF is the domestic law enforcement agency tasked with enforcing laws related to alcohol, tobacco and firearms and other explosives.

Responsibilities of the agency are to investigate and prevent federal offenses related to these substances and weapons, including unlawful use, manufacturing, possession as well as illegal trafficking and tax evasion related to alcohol and tobacco products. Specifically, Republicans took aim at the ATF during Joe Biden’s presidency for making more strict federal-level firearms-related regulations, which they say infringed on Second Amendment rights.

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