Latest news with #Ingrassia
The Hill
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Senate punts on Ingrassia, controversial nominee to lead Office of Special Counsel
A Senate panel punted its consideration of Paul Ingrassia amid concerns about the controversial nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel. Ingrassia was slated for a confirmation hearing Thursday before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC), but his name was quietly removed from the agenda. Ingrassia, a former podcast host, has made a series of controversial remarks praising right-wing figures and the events of Jan. 6, 2021. 'I'm relieved to see that Paul Ingrassia, the nominee to run the Office of Special Counsel, has been pulled from today's hearing. The Office of Special Counsel is an independent, nonpartisan agency that investigates allegations of prohibited personnel practices involving federal employees, including whistleblower retaliation,' Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the committee, said during his opening remarks. 'Mr. Ingrassia is unqualified for the position, both in terms of legal experience and given his long record of bigoted statements. And I urge the administration to formally withdraw his nomination.' A White House official said they do not plan to do so. 'Paul Ingrassia is still the nominee and is currently serving in his role as White House Liaison to the Department of Homeland Security. He will spend the next month speaking with Senators and we expect him to be swiftly confirmed. The President has full confidence in him and his ability to lead the Office of Special Counsel,' an administration official told The Hill. In 2020, Ingrassia said it was 'time for @realDonaldTrump to declare martial law and secure his re-election.' He also said in December that President Trump should 'offer reparations to the tune of $1 million per family (at least)' for Jan. 6 defendants. Those remarks run afoul of a pledge by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who said he plans to oppose any Trump nominee that expressed support for Jan. 6. 'The guy's got the exact wrong rap sheet to get my support,' Tillis told The Washington Examiner. "It's January 6th, it's a number of other things. So, I think he's one of these people that's checked all the boxes and they're all the wrong boxes," he told NBC News. 'It's pretty apparent to me he's not ready for prime time, but he's young, he's got plenty of time to learn,' Tillis said. Ingrassia is a former writer for the Daily Caller who graduated from law school in 2021. Beyond his comments on Jan. 6, Ingrassia served on the legal team representing self-described misogynist Andrew Tate, describing him as the 'embodiment of the ancient ideal of excellence' for his 'sheer physical prowess' and being 'sharp as a tack' and full of 'willpower and spirit.' Tate has been charged with human trafficking in Romania as well as rape in the United Kingdom. Ingrassia has also pushed for Nick Fuentes, a far-right activist who has espoused white supremacist and antisemitic views, to be reinstated to Twitter, now known as X, calling it a First Amendment issue in a Substack post. The role of special counsel serves many purposes. It's an office where whistleblowers can file complaints and federal workers can go for help if they feel they've been wrongfully terminated. It also investigates violations of Hatch Act prohibitions on electioneering. Trump fired prior special counsel Hampton Dellinger despite his being confirmed to a five-year term after being nominated by President Biden. During his brief time under the Trump administration, Dellinger challenged the widespread firings of probationary workers hired or promoted within the last year or two. Dellinger launched a legal challenge to remain in his post and was briefly reinstalled by the courts, but he resigned from the role when an appeals court determined he could not stay on the job as the case continued.
Axios
5 days ago
- Politics
- Axios
Trump nominees face new round of Senate GOP resistance
A trio of Trump nominees is running into Republican resistance on the confirmation front, exposing ideological rifts the party has mostly papered over for nominations. Why it matters: It could complicate life for Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who wants to confirm more nominees fast — at the president's demand — without fully canceling August recess. Driving the news: Three nominees are now facing a future that's either uncertain or uncomfortable. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is less than enthusiastic about Mike Waltz as U.S. ambassador to the UN as Axios scooped earlier Wednesday. Waltz's nomination isn't dead, but it may need some Democratic support to reach the floor favorably. Emil Bove, a former defense attorney for Trump, is looking at a tough final confirmation vote for a judgeship on the U.S. Court of Appeals. His nomination cleared a procedural vote Tuesday, but Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have told reporters they will vote "no." And then there's Paul Ingrassia, who Trump has nominated to the Office of the Special Counsel and is facing a confirmation hearing Thursday. "It's pretty apparent to me he's not ready for prime time," Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told NBC News. Ingrassia bombed in a meeting with committee staff this week, multiple sources familiar with the meeting told Axios. Ingrassia will have some explaining to do at the hearing, senators on the committee told us. "There's just some different statements he's made in the past that need clarification," Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said.
The Intercept
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
Project 2025 Data Leak Shows a Paul Ingrassia Calling for Test for Voting and Halting Immigration
In 2024, as Donald Trump's reelection campaign gathered steam, the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 had its eye on staffing a new Republican administration. The initiative, which was designed around crafting an agenda for an incoming Trump White House, put out a call for aspiring administration officials. The application, including multiple-choice questions and open-ended queries, sought to place would-be Trump apparatchiks on the political spectrum and suss out their political priorities. One of the people who filled the form out entered a name that would echo through the first six months of Trump's new term: Paul Ingrassia. Ingrassia is set to land a powerful job as head of the Justice Department's Office of Special Counsel. Now, pending a Senate hearing this week, Ingrassia is set to land a powerful job as head of the Justice Department's Office of Special Counsel. Among other responsibilities related to the federal workforce, the office is supposed to protect whistleblowers and keep partisan politics out of the civil service. For Ingrassia's critics, he would be just the wrong person to lead OSC. The Project 2025 questionnaire answers given under Ingrassia's name would appear to bolster the case that the applicant's primary concern is loyalty to Trump and sharp-elbowed partisan politics. The responses include allusions to severely cutting down federal agencies because of their 'toxic ideologies'; halting immigration; and imposing a new test for voting. (Ingrassia did not respond to a request for comment.) A leaked dataset of the Project 2025 application questionnaires was released in June by the group Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoSecrets. An analysis of the leaked data showed that more than 13,000 people had filled out the applications. (Heritage did not respond to a request for comment.) DDoSecrets redacted the full entries for applicants but provided The Intercept with an unredacted version. The contact information and other personal data included in the Project 2025 file matched Paul Ingrassia's information. On July 24, Ingrassia will face a confirmation hearing in the Senate — and good government groups are opposing his bid. 'As head of OSC, the special counsel should be someone who respects federal workers, who will treat them fairly and without bias,' a group of 24 civil society groups led by the Project on Government Oversight wrote in an open letter to Senators opposing Ingrassia's nomination. 'The special counsel must be a person who will exercise their duties in a nonpartisan manner, a person of honesty and integrity who has the necessary experience to fulfill such an important role.' 'Paul Ingrassia is none of these.' Ingrassia has advocated for the arrest of the president's political enemies, said that Democrats are a threat to democracy, and labeled Republicans who disagree with him as RINOs — a derisive acronym meaning 'Republicans in Name Only.' In the Project 2025 questionnaire filled out under the name Paul Ingrassia, the respondent agreed that 'the President should be able to advance his/her agenda through the bureaucracy without hinderance from unelected federal officials.' A response to a prompt about which political issue he was most passionate about and why included a long list of pet projects. 'I'm passionate about restructuring the administrative state, condensing the size and scope of the various bureaucratic agencies, defunding many of them, given how destructive they and their toxic ideologies have been on the American way of life; reform and shut down many of the intelligence agencies; fully upend the justice department; reform the courts; redesign Washington, D.C., and build an even better city in its wake,' the Project 2025 applicant wrote. The questionnaire also asked respondents to 'name one living public policy figure whom you greatly admire and why.' The response — Trump and Pat Buchanan — lacked an explanation. When asked to 'name one person, past or present, who has most influenced the development of your political philosophy,' the data under Paul Ingrassia's name said 'Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Donald Trump.' The answer to the question about what issues the applicant was passionate about said: I'm also very passionate about immigration — specifically, ending birthright citizenship, deporting all illegals and thinking about economic, other ways, to incentivize them to self-deport, building the wall and militarizing it with state of the art technology, personnel; instating a moratorium on all immigration, and revising the tests for citizenship, voting, other basic privileges of American life. Long before his stint in government, Ingrassia was a right-wing firebrand. A 30-year-old lawyer and right-wing commentator, he has referred to himself as 'Trump's favorite Substacker' and spent years writing articles praising Trump. He has ties to far-right figures and those with fringe beliefs. Last summer, Ingrassia appeared at a rally organized by far-right provocateur Nick Fuentes, whom Ingrassia has advocated for in the past. He also has a relationship with Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, a January 6 rioter who the Justice Department called a 'Nazi sympathizer.' Ingrassia's social media has included 9/11 conspiracy theories and support for Alex Jones, who gained notoriety for denying children were murdered at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. He graduated from Cornell Law in 2022. In 2023, Ingrassia worked for McBride Law, a firm that represented far-right influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate when they were facing allegations of rape and human trafficking in Romania and the United Kingdom. The firm filed a defamation lawsuit against one of their accusers that summer. (The Tate brothers have consistently denied these allegations. Proceedings are ongoing in both countries.) Ingrassia was not legally allowed to practice or market himself as a lawyer at the time; the firm referred to him as an Ivy League-educated associate attorney working on the case. He sat for the bar in July 2023 and was admitted to practice in New York on July 30, 2024. After McBride, he worked as a communications director for the conservative nonprofit National Constitutional Law Union and occasionally wrote articles for the right-wing site Gateway Pundit. He left both positions after taking a job in January as a presidential liaison to the Department of Justice in January. After a few months, however, he was reassigned from the Justice Department to another agency amid reports of administration infighting. Reporting from ABC suggested his advocacy for the department to hire John Pierce, his old boss at the National Constitutional Law Union, played a role. Pierce represented many January 6 rioters. During his time as a criminal defense attorney, Pierce failed to show up to court, sent in a co-counsel who wasn't authorized to practice law, forgot how many clients he had, and was fired by multiple defendants. According to ABC, Ingrassia wanted Pierce to run the pardon office at the Justice Department. Now, with his elevation to the Office of Special Counsel, Ingrassia could be back at the Justice Department.
The Hill
26-06-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Democrats urge spiking of Trump watchdog nominee who would ‘traumatize' workforce
Two Democratic committee leaders are urging the Senate to reject the nomination of Paul Ingrassia to lead a top whistleblower office, calling him 'unfit' for the role and arguing he would help the Trump administration 'traumatize the federal workforce and consolidate unchecked power.' Ingrassia, a former podcast host, was nominated last month to lead the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC). He has come under fire for a series of controversial remarks about Jan. 6, 2021, as well as his praise for other right-wing figures. OSC is a unique office within government, one with a dual mission to both enforce the electioneering prohibitions of the Hatch Act and to protect federal employees — fighting unlawful firings and serving as an outlet for whistleblowers. Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees, said Ingrassia would not tackle either mission 'without fear or favor.' '[OSC] is an independent guardian of accountability within the executive branch. Mr. Ingrassia's loyalty to Donald Trump over the Constitution, his calls for imposing martial law and celebrating violent January 6th insurrectionists, and his close associations with antisemitic extremists all make it clear that he lacks the temperament, experience, and fundamental constitutional fidelity required to lead this office,' Garcia and Raskin, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees, wrote in the letter. 'He is not simply unqualified — his confirmation would pose a direct threat to federal whistleblowers, the credibility of the OSC, and the integrity of our oversight institutions.' Ingrassia was previously a writer for the Daily Caller and hosted the podcast Right On Point. He is also an attorney and served on the legal team representing self-described misogynist Andrew Tate. Ingrassia has called Tate, who has been charged with human trafficking in Romania as well as rape in the United Kingdom, the 'embodiment of the ancient ideal of excellence.' In 2020, he said it was 'time for @realDonaldTrump to declare martial law and secure his re-election.' He also said in December that Trump should 'offer reparations to the tune of $1 million per family (at least)' for Jan. 6 defendants. The letter notes that Ingrassia graduated law school three years ago and describes him as being fired from a job at the Justice Department he had at the start of the Trump administration. Various outlets have reported Ingrassia walked the halls of DOJ telling people he was the 'eyes and ears' of the White House and clashed with leadership as he pushed to hire those with 'exceptional loyalty' to Trump. Garcia and Raskin noted numerous Trump officials were cited for Hatch Act violations during Trump's first term. 'It is hard to imagine a nominee less likely to enforce the Hatch Act in a fair and even-handed way if an investigation implicated anyone close to the Trump Administration,' they wrote. The lawmakers also expressed fear for whistleblowers, who often report matters to OSC if they fear they will face retribution at their own agencies. 'When whistleblowers come forward, they are speaking truth to power. They do so at great personal risk to bring transparency where secrecy and misconduct might otherwise prevail. Yet Mr. Ingrassia has time and again made clear that he is blindly loyal to the President—a view that is utterly disqualifying for any position of public trust, but particularly one charged with defending the rights of whistleblowers,' they wrote. The White House defended their selection in a Thursday statement. 'Paul Ingrassia is a respected attorney who has served President Trump exceptionally well and will continue to do so as the next head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. The eleventh-hour smear campaign will not deter the President from supporting this nomination, and the administration continues to have full confidence in his ability to advance the President's agenda,' said White House spokesman Harrison Fields. Trump fired previous special counsel Hampton Dellinger, despite his Senate confirmation to a five-year term, amid his battle to restore fired federal workers to their posts after the Trump administration booted federal workers still in their probationary period. Dellinger, who sued to keep this job, was initially reinstated to his post, but ended his legal battle after an appeals court declined to keep him in his role while the case continued. His departure also meant the end of the OSC's battle to protect fired probationary workers, and the office has since shifted its position on the matter. The Thursday letter is the first from Garcia since his election to serve as the ranking member of the Oversight Committee. A hearing date for Ingrassia has not yet been set by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, but the lawmakers encouraged the panel to reject his nomination. 'President Trump wants to appoint Mr. Ingrassia because he knows that this nominee will treat treasonous, secessionist rhetoric as acceptable political discourse; reward extremism instead of condemning it; and work to tear down, not build up, the democratic institutions we have sworn to protect,' the two lawmakers wrote. 'The ultimate victims of Mr. Ingrassia's installation as special counsel would be the brave civil servant whistleblowers, the credibility of the federal workforce and civil servants, and the American people they serve.'
CNN
16-06-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Whistleblowers shun office that's supposed to protect them amid fears of Trump partisanship
The Office of Special Counsel has for nearly 50 years been the US government's one-stop shop for whistleblowers and alleged ethics violations, a federal watchdog created after Watergate with the lofty mandate 'to end government and political corruption.' Now it appears to be facing its biggest test yet, as insiders and independent watchdogs raise alarms that the historically nonpartisan agency has been 'captured' by loyalists from the very administration it's supposed to police. In their eyes, a difficult situation got even worse a few weeks ago when President Donald Trump nominated Paul Ingrassia to lead the agency. Ingrassia, a self-described 'true MAGA loyalist,' has embraced calls to crack down on the supposed anti-Trump 'deep state' within the federal workforce. Though Ingrassia will need to be confirmed by the Republican-led Senate, his nomination has already fueled speculation that he'll transform the agency into a political tool to promote Trump's agenda and punish the president's enemies. In interviews with CNN, nearly a dozen former federal ethics officials, lawyers with pending cases at OSC, and outside experts said that changes have already pushed whistleblowers away from the agency and toward Congress, the press, or to inspectors general at federal agencies. Some are having second thoughts about coming forward in the first place. Tom Devine, a lawyer at the nonpartisan Government Accountability Project who has represented whistleblowers since the 1970s, told CNN that some of his clients are reluctant to move forward with allegations of wrongdoing and cover-ups at federal agencies because they're scared of what Trump loyalists at OSC might do. 'For years, the OSC has been our first option to help whistleblowers,' Devine said. 'If Ingrassia is confirmed, our mission will be reversed. Our duty will be to warn whistleblower about entrusting their rights to OSC because it would be an act of professional suicide.' Ingrassia declined to comment. OSC spokesman Corey Williams said in an email that, 'we do not share those concerns' that the agency will become a partisan tool under Ingrassia. The OSC safeguards the nonpartisan nature of the civil service by enforcing the Hatch Act, which bars political activity by federal employees, and investigates whistleblowers' claims about waste, fraud, or abuse — and also protects those whistleblowers from retaliation. The agency usually operates away from the spotlight, but there have been scandals over the years. Reagan's appointee was accused of politicizing the office, and George W Bush's was given a brief jail sentence after being found to be involved in an illegal cover-up. The office made waves during Trump's first term when it recommended that he fire his advisor Kellyanne Conway for campaigning from the White House, and when it later rebuked Cabinet members for appearing at the 2020 Republican convention. It also ruffled the Biden White House at times, calling out some top aides for their political activity. A hallmark of recent OSC leaders has been a willingness to buck the party line. These rebukes against top Trump officials came when OSC was run by a Trump-appointed Republican, and the Biden-era rebukes came under a Biden-appointed Democrat. But a few weeks into his second term, Trump fired the Senate-confirmed agency leader, Hampton Dellinger, a Biden appointee. Under federal law, Dellinger's term didn't expire until 2029, and he could only be dismissed for cause, which Trump did not provide. (Dellinger mounted a brief and unsuccessful lawsuit to get his job back.) With Dellinger gone, Trump allies at OSC unwound his efforts to reinstate thousands of probationary federal employees that were fired in February as part of the Trump administration's mass layoffs. They also loosened longstanding guidelines and started allowing federal workers to wear campaign gear – like MAGA hats – while on the job. A former federal ethics official said the current turmoil has already damaged the OSC's independence, because 'even if the president appoints someone very credible and qualified, they can now be fired on a whim.' 'The office is a shell of its former self,' the former federal ethics official told CNN in an interview. A second former federal ethics official said OSC 'is already a paper tiger.' Into this, new fears were injected last month when Trump nominated Ingrassia to be the new head of the office. Though the president praised Ingrassia as a 'highly respected attorney, writer, and Constitutional Scholar,' critics say they doubt the 30-year-old was fit for the job. Federal law requires the leader of OSC to be an attorney who, 'by demonstrated ability, background, training, or experience, is especially qualified to carry out the functions of the position.' Ingrassia graduated from Cornell Law School in 2022. An election denier, Ingrassia hosted a far-right podcast and wrote articles for the right-wing conspiracy website Gateway Pundit, often drawing reposts from Trump himself. 'It is hard to see how someone can argue that a nominee who graduated law school just three years ago and has never worked in this area of the law, is anything other than patently unqualified,' said David Kligerman of Whistleblower Aid, a nonpartisan organization that represents whistleblowers at OSC and other agencies. An avid social media user, Ingrassia posted on X that at the OSC, he 'will make every effort to restore competence and integrity to the Executive Branch.' 'Alarm bells are ringing off the hook, not just for the next four years, but this is setting us back 50 years,' said Donald Sherman, the top lawyer for the liberal-leaning watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. 'Even if his credentials weren't so glaringly unfit for this role, his extreme partisanship would be disqualifying on its own.' White House spokesman Harrison Fields praised Ingrassia's service in the Trump administration and said he'll continue to be an ally. 'The eleventh-hour smear campaign will not deter the President from supporting (Ingrassia's) nomination, and the administration continues to have full confidence in his ability to advance the President's agenda,' Fields told CNN in an email last week. Despite the Trump administration's confidence in OSC, some whistleblowers are already shunning the office. Devine, the accountability lawyer, told CNN that clients of his who say they have witnessed a public health cover-up at the Environmental Protection Agency, and wrongdoing at the Department of Homeland Security on handling child trafficking are reluctant to move forward with their reports because of concerns about the Trump loyalists at OSC. Other lawyers who spoke to CNN said they are suggesting that whistleblowers go to inspectors general instead. That's where former Trump administration official Miles Taylor filed his recent complaints. Taylor claims Trump stripped him of a security clearance and ordered the Justice Department to investigate him as punishment for his anonymous anti-Trump op-ed in 2018 and for campaigning against him in 2020 and 2024. 'Traditional avenues for government whistleblowers to raise concerns have become dangerous,' Taylor told CNN, adding that it's now challenging to discern 'who is friend or foe' at federal agencies. A Democratic congressional source familiar with the matter told CNN they've seen an uptick of whistleblowers coming forward to Congress, compared to the previous session. Rep. Stephen Lynch, the acting top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said, 'if whistleblowers do not feel comfortable reporting wrongdoing to another one of Trump's cronies, our doors are always open.'
