I understand where you are coming from and find that to be generally reasonable.
As you mentioned, I also don’t know what she did or if she was employed by the ATF prior to her position as Chief of DEI. I tried searching just now. She doesn’t seem to have a LinkedIn and the ATF leadership page on their website does not provide her bio (shocker).
As I stated before, at minimum somebody (either the Executive branch or Congress) should look into the matter. It seems rather suspicious given the department’s history and timing of the job title change. I suppose you could be right that they simply hired her back into her old position. We don’t know. Someone should find out.
Let’s say though that she was in fact in a leadership position prior to her DEI role, and the agency just simply hired her into her prior role as you said is a possibility. I’d still take issue with that. That would mean they just suddenly found the need for a new senior leadership role and hired this woman into it without consideration to any other candidate for the job. We can assume that is the case with great confidence due to the sudden change of her job title after Trump’s order. She should have been placed on paid administrative leave as per the order, then the ATF could have opened a requisition for the role, and then Ms. Boykin could have applied & interviewed for the position just like any other candidates. In your proposed situation, the bureau is not being transparent with the public, are creating leadership positions on a whim, and making hiring decisions without consideration to who would be best for the role as evidenced by the fact that nobody else was considered.