It looks like he asked about the domain transfer, and from the transcript Lee didn't say "no", and then later --- it looks like a month later, from the transcripts the other Freenode ops posted --- Lee asked for an employee of Freenode Ltd to be given access to Freenode's DNS and IRCop status.

Here's a log; search for "kevinp":

https://paste.sr.ht/blob/4f5c7a6b3f6adb4697572f8cd77582fa16a...

This is all super weird.