Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hang on. If I'm following all this correctly, at that point the current head of staff had only held that role for less than a month. So the big demand here was that control over the domain name was transferred not to the community, or to some non-profit, but to some individual who'd seemingly been manoeuvred into place for the purpose of transferring that control to them. That certainly smells like a shady takeover a…
The previous holder of that job, Christel, had access to the DNS account, why couldn't Tom? Like, yeah, Tom was maneuovered into place to take control of the DNS account, because thats what a head of staff does. Do you think that each new US president shouldn't get the nuclear codes either?
He wasn't just asking for access to the DNS account - which it seems like, in fact, he already had and used to try and lock Andrew Lee and others involved in Freenode out - but for ownership of the domains to be transferred to him personally. Which would mean that in effect he would be the one who decided what Freenode was and who controlled it from then on, and if any other staff or users disagreed they could just pound sand. In particular, he appears to have rejected the idea of any kind of community ownership or control over the domain ownership.