by We know that David Chipman served as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit Field Division of BATFE. He served in that position from November 2006 until March 2009. While serving in that position, he is alleged by a fellow BATFE Special Agent to have made disparaging remarks about the number of African-Americans who had passed the BATFE promotion exam to be ASAC’s. That agent filed a complaint with the EEOC about the comment.
“Wow, there were an unusually large number of African American agents that passed the exam this time. They must have been cheating.”
The Daily Caller spoke with another former ATF Special Agent who said Chipman’s comments spread throughout the Field Division.
The former Detroit-based ATF agent, who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, did not personally witness Chipman making the comment, but recalled colleagues talking about how Chipman “made this remark that all the African Americans must be cheating because there’s no way they could get these scores.”
“He made this remark in front of a bunch of witnesses,” the former Detroit-based ATF agent said. “It spread like wildfire at the agency. It got tremendous blowback, as it should. Here you have a middle manager saying something like that with absolutely no proof.”
Chipman was asked Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) about any EEOC reports and responded that there had been two. He went on to add that they had been resolved without any finding of discrimination. Chipman then added that his ATF personnel file remains under the control of the Federal government.
Chipman has been very reticent about providing his personnel record for public review. According to Tom Jones, president of the American Accountability Foundation, this is a big red flag based upon his own 13 years serving as a Senate staffer. As a result, AAF filed a Freedom of Information Act request on April 20th requesting documents relating to “all complaints, grievances, requests for investigation, or investigatory documents related to employee misconduct, harassment, malfeasance, or other violations of the standards of professional conduct” concerning Chipman. They filed another request in May after being told his records had been sent to the National Personnel Records Center of the National Archives.
As you might expect out of the Biden Administration, this request has been stone-walled with no definitive answer. Thus, the American Accountability Foundation filed a Federal lawsuit in US District Court for DC seeking these documents. They are seeking a formal response from BATFE to either comply with or deny the request. They then ask for these documents to be released as they believe records are still being held within BATFE.
Do I think Chipman could have made these remarks? I do because I think he is arrogant enough to have made them and because too many other agents have some recollection of it. Do I think it probably was swept under the table at the time? Sure. The BATFE management has a history of protecting their fair haired children and it appears that Chipman was one of those.
The FOIA lawsuit is below:
D.D.C.-21-cv-01669-dckt-000001_000-filed-2021-06-22 by jpr9954 on Scribd
