Trump taps 30-year-old with little government experience and links to Holocaust denier to lead federal agency
Paul Ingrassia, nominated by Trump in May to lead the Office of Special Counsel, has a history of racist language and promoting conspiracy theories, including denying the Holocaust, according to a new report from
The Office of Special Counsel was created after the Watergate scandal and intended to be politically independent to protect whistleblowers from retaliation and end government and political corruption.
Previous heads overseeing the office of about 140 people have included longtime prosecutors or other federal employees, including former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election.
Ingrassia graduated Cornell Law School in 2022 and was admitted to the bar in New York last summer. Since then, he has worked as a White House liaison at the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, according to his LinkedIn.
According to the report, which reviewed comments Ingrassia made from 2019 to 2024, the 30-year-old not only brings much less experience than previous occupants of the position, but a history of inflammatory remarks about a variety of subjects.
While Ingrassia has publicly shown support for notorious White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, CNN found the two had a much deeper connection than previously known.
Ingrassia has shared comments from Fuentes on his personal social media pages in addition to accounts for his podcast, Right on Point. He also came to Fuentes' defense when he was banned from X, arguing for his reinstatement in an April 2023 Substack post titled 'Free Nick Fuentes.'
More recently, he was photographed attending a June 2024 rally in Detroit in support of Fuentes. However, Ingrassia later denied his attendance was intentional, telling NPR, 'I had no knowledge of who organized the event, observed for 5-10 minutes, then left.'
Both Fuentes and Ingrassia have criticized the conservative organization Turning Point USA for supposedly being too pro-Israel and insufficiently pro-White, according to the report.
There is also evidence pointing to anti-Israel sentiment in posts shared by his podcast, including a since-deleted post from December 2020 that read, 'Stop shilling for Israel, @GOP,' and criticizeing US foreign aid with a tweet falsely stating, 'The $500 trillion to Israel adds salt to the wound.'
Ingrassia became known as a pro-Trump commentator online as early as 2019, when he was just 24 years old. In addition to his connection to Fuentes, he has also publicly promoted conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11.
The Department of Homeland Security dismissed CNN's findings as an 'attempted smear campaign,' with a spokesperson saying in a statement that Ingrassia 'has served President Trump and Secretary Noem exceptionally well at the Department of Homeland Security and will continue to do so as the next head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.'
The White House also expressed support for Ingrassia, and DHS sent a statement from an unnamed senior administration official, who said, 'He has the support of many Jewish groups, and has been a steadfast advocate for Jewish causes and personnel thus far during his time working for the Trump administration.'
The Independent has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
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