David Chipman’s nomination to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has been problematic since the day it was announced. Joe Biden not only chose an aspiring gun-grabber and advocate of confiscating many Americans’ favorite firearms, but David Chipman was and remains on the payroll of Giffords, one of the country’s foremost gun control advocacy organizations.
If that wasn’t enough to scuttle the nomination — and it should have been — questions then began to arise about Chipman’s prior career at ATF, including a duty pistol he allegedly lost. Then there was the fiasco that was his confirmation hearing.
But what may end up finally ending Chipman’s bid to head the nation’s firearms regulatory agency are allegations of racist remarks he made about fellow black ATF agents while working in the ATF’s Detroit office. We wrote about those allegations here back on June 22 when the American Accountability Foundation sued for access to Chipman’s ATF personnel file.
Last week, however, The Reload’s Stephen Gutowski wrote that multiple ATF agents have confirmed the reports of racist comments by Chipman and of complaints filed against him that resulted.
Now, as a result of that corroboration, Gutowski is reporting that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is calling on the Biden Administration to withdraw Chipman’s nomination. And the Republican Senators who sit on the judiciary committee are calling for another hearing into the matter if Biden refuses.
As Gutowski wrote . . .
“In light of these credible allegations, and Mr. Chipman’s long record of anti-Second Amendment extremism, the President must withdraw Mr. Chipman’s nomination,” McConnell told The Reload.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about McConnell’s call to withdraw Chipman.
Additionally, every Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee called for a new hearing on Chipman to further investigate the report and access the complaints made against him. In a letter to Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) obtained by The Reload, the Republicans demanded the release of the complaints and a committee investigation into how Chipman came to work in the Detroit office well as the circumstance surrounding his departure. They noted the allegation he made comments denigrating black agents first surfaced in a June lawsuit but deserve new scrutiny now that more ATF agents corroborated their existence.
Read Gutowski’s full report here.
