The White House is under pressure to ensure history does not repeat itself when its new Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives director nominee finds himself before the Senate after President Joe Biden’s first choice did not garner enough support on Capitol Hill.
Steve Dettelbach, a unanimously Senate-approved former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, does not have David Chipman’s record as a dedicated anti-gun advocate. But his confirmation to become ATF’s first permanent head since 2015 will still be bogged down by politics before an expected summer crime surge and the 2022 midterm elections.
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If Dettelbach’s name seems familiar, it is because the 57-year-old was the Democratic Ohio state attorney general nominee defeated in 2018 by Republican Dave Yost.
Prior to returning as a partner at legal and lobbying firm BakerHostetler, the Harvard Law School graduate worked as a Justice Department Civil Rights Division trial lawyer and Senate Judiciary Committee Democratic staffer as well as assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland and Cleveland. And he referenced the latter two during a White House event Monday commemorating his nomination.
“I have partnered with the ATF for decades in its crucial fight against violent gun violence,” he said. “Whether it was taking a single violent recidivist off the street in Maryland or putting together a big racketeering case against a violent gang in Youngstown, Ohio, I have seen the ATF work with other law enforcement to make so many of our communities safer.”
The White House event, which simultaneously showcased Biden’s ghost guns crackdown, was a courtesy not extended to Chipman. And it sets the stage for Dettelbach’s confirmation as the president experiences dismal approval ratings, including regarding crime.
Republican operatives appeared flat-footed Monday without prepared statements scorning Biden’s selection of Dettelbach, focusing instead on his ghost gun measures. At the same time, the White House was ready to promote Dettelbach endorsements from Republicans, such as former President Donald Trump’s deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein.
“The last guy had a ton of issues with workplace complaints, which hardly any of the postmortems mention,” one source told the Washington Examiner.
Lawmakers, including Senate Judiciary Committee Republican Ted Cruz of Texas, are withholding judgment until Dettelbach testifies before his panel.
“I have deep concerns with the radical direction the ATF has been taking over the past 16 months, including an obvious and growing hostility toward Second Amendment rights,” he said.
Dettelbach’s nomination was applauded by prominent anti-gun advocates. For John Feinblatt, president of the nonprofit organization Everytown for Gun Safety, Dettelbach would end the ATF’s “culture of complicity” with the firearm industry.
“Steve Dettelbach will be the strong leader the ATF needs to lead a top-to-bottom overhaul of the agency, and we urge the Senate to swiftly confirm him,” he said.
But Feinblatt shared a similar comment after Chipman’s unsuccessful nomination in the spring of 2021.
Chipman was the second of three notable nominations Biden has withdrawn. The first was Neera Tanden, whom Biden tapped as Office of Management and Budget director, last March. The other was Sarah Bloom Raskin, his Federal Reserve Board vice supervision chairwoman pick, last month.
Biden condemned Republicans for using “gun crime as a political talking point instead of taking serious steps to address it” after he pulled Chipman from consideration.
“That’s why they’ve moved in lockstep to block David Chipman’s confirmation, and it’s why they side with gun manufacturers over the overwhelming majority of the American people in opposing commonsense measures like universal background checks,” he said last September.
But less than three weeks later, Chipman criticized the White House for not helping him through the process.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended Biden and his aides from Chipman’s descriptions of being “an island” and the administration having “no plan B.” She contended that “a whole team,” even Biden, had been “committed to getting it through.”
“Unfortunately, we didn’t have the votes,” Psaki said. “We also have been engaged with him about working to find a job in the administration.”
“We absolutely worked to get him confirmed,” she added. “But we weren’t naive about how challenging that would be given the history.”
On Monday, Psaki told reporters that Republicans should support “a career prosecutor like Steve Dettelbach” if they were really “tough on crime.” But she declined to outline any congressional outreach already conducted on his behalf, particularly with West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.
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“Well, because we’re just announcing him today, I would expect it would be from here forward, right?” she said.
