Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter says he was not notified by the ATF in advance of an operation that apparently took place at a Great Falls, Montana business earlier this week.

Montana Congressman Matt Rosendale (R-MT02) called out the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives for what he described as a raid on a Great Falls outfitting business.

Rep. Rosendale: I’m incredibly disturbed by initial reports that the IRS and ATF closed Highwood Creek Outfitters without any warning today. This is yet another example of the Biden Administration weaponizing federal agencies to target and harass hardworking Americans. We cannot allow Biden to continue expanding these agencies to infringe on our liberties.

KMON Radio in Great Falls earlier shared an update on their Facebook page stating that they had contacted both the IRS and the ATF:

KMON: Both the IRS and ATF would not say why they were there. A spokeswoman for the IRS would only say they were there on official IRS business. The ATF says it was providing assistance to the IRS. We attempted to enter the store today and were stopped by agents at the door who would only say that the gun store is closed and will reopen tomorrow.

I spoke with Montana's Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R-MT) on Thursday morning. He said he hasn't gotten any information from the ATF regarding this news. He talked about the need for federal agencies to coordinate with local law enforcement, especially the county sheriff.

AG Knudsen: The sheriff is the highest elected law enforcement official you have in your county, I mean- that's just the bottom line. The sheriff's need to be looped in on these things and then they need to know what's going on.

AG Knudsen also talked about how the Montana Department of Justice has a very good working relationship with the DEA here in Montana. They've also worked with some good local ATF agents on some cases.

AG Knudsen: I hate to say this, but this is this is part of a pattern that we're seeing with ATF now...I can tell you in my time as a county attorney, local ATF assets were usually very helpful and very good in some firearms cases, theft cases, certain prosecutions. But I think what we're starting to see here is, there's obviously been a change at the top in DC. It's taken about two years for that to trickle out to the regional offices. And our regional headquarters for the ATF is in Denver. I think we've got new leadership in Denver who is now pushing- Steve Dettelbach, the head of the ATF in Washington, DC- we're starting to see them coming to Montana, going door to door, looking for forced reset triggers, looking for some of these things that they've suddenly deemed to be illegal machine guns, even though we've had no no law change from the Federal Congress. So this is very concerning stuff...

Here's the full audio of our chat with AG Knudsen:

By the way, remember this story from last Fall involving the ATF at a Great Falls gun show?