Latest news with #OfficeofSpecialCounsel
The Hill
6 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.
The Intercept
6 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.
CNN
02-07-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Trump's pick to lead whistleblower office shared 9/11 truther video
The man President Donald Trump wants to put in charge of protecting whistleblowers – and rooting out government corruption – is a 30-year-old lawyer with barely a year of government experience and a history of racist invective, conspiratorial rants, and affinity for a well-known White nationalist and Holocaust denier. Paul Ingrassia, whom Trump nominated in late May to lead the Office of Special Counsel, brands himself as 'President Trump's favorite writer' after Trump shared his comments close to 100 times last year on social media. Admitted to the bar only last summer, Ingrassia, 30, held a brief White House internship during Trump's first term. This year, Ingrassia first worked as a White House liaison at the Justice Department before reportedly being pushed out and reassigned to the Department of Homeland Security, where he helps with staffing the agency. Now, Ingrassia is up for a much bigger job leading the approximately 110-person OSC. Created after the Watergate scandal, the office has for nearly 50 years been the US government's one-stop shop for whistleblowers and alleged ethics violations. The five-year term for the job is structured to span multiple administrations, designed specifically to operate independently from the White House. It also requires Senate confirmation. Ingrassia has yet to be scheduled for a confirmation hearing, leaving US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to continue serving in the role in an acting capacity. Ingrassia would mark a sharp departure from previous heads of the OSC, a role designed to be politically independent and protect whistleblowers from retaliation. Rather than a long record of managerial or prosecutorial experience, typical of those who previously held the job, Ingrassia brings a fervent loyalty to Trump and a lengthy record of inflammatory statements, only a small portion of which have been previously reported. CNN's KFile reviewed hundreds of Ingrassia's comments between 2019 and 2024, including his social media, his appearances on far-right podcasts, and archived conversations from X Spaces, a livestreamed audio chat room that allows users to host or join real-time discussions. Last year, on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Ingrassia shared a video of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claiming the US government planned the attacks or let them happen, with Jones boasting in his tweet, 'I've been exposing 9/11 since before it even happened.' Ingrassia had defended Jones several months earlier, writing, 'WE ALL STAND WITH ALEX JONES!!' in June 2024. He was commenting on a video of Jones crying on his broadcast over fears that his InfoWars media platform could be shut down due to $1.5 billion in judgments against Jones for spreading false claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax. Ingrassia and his podcast's X account have also shared comments from notorious White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Ingrassia has argued publicly that 'straight White men' are the most intelligent demographic group and should be prioritized in education. He once co-hosted a podcast that called for martial law and secession after Trump's 2020 defeat if all legal efforts failed. On the night of January 6, 2021, the podcast account also posted a quote from President John F. Kennedy, reading, 'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, (will) make violent revolution inevitable.' Ingrassia, a longtime defender of January 6 participants, was later present for the release of convicted January 6 rioters after Trump commuted their sentences. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security dismissed CNN's reporting as an 'attempted smear campaign' but did not respond to a detailed list of questions or refute any of the documented comments or associations. A DHS spokesperson said 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 provided a statement of support for Ingrassia, and DHS sent a statement from an unnamed senior administration official saying, '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.' When CNN requested a list of names of the 'many Jewish groups' referenced, the spokesperson replied with two names, The Holocaust Council - which does not appear to have a website - and Mort Klein, of the Zionist Organization of America. As early as 2019, when he was 24, Ingrassia positioned himself as a tenacious pro-Trump commentator online, slowly building a following by lobbing insults at Trump's Republican rivals and parroting many of the president's grievances. After graduating from Cornell Law School in 2022, Ingrassia mostly worked with conservative organizations and as a law clerk at The McBride Law Firm, best known for representing January 6 defendants. Ingrassia contributed as a writer for the conspiracy blog Gateway Pundit, twice served as a fellow at the conservative Claremont Institute, and served on the Board of Advisors for the New York Young Republican Club. He was also communications director for the conservative National Constitutional Law Union – which bills itself as a counter to the ACLU. Ingrassia is perhaps best known for his Substack, which was repeatedly shared by Trump on his Truth Social platform. A review of Trump's Truth Social account found that he mentioned Ingrassia close to 100 times in 2024. Ingrassia wrote glowingly about the Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year, but stopped writing on his Substack shortly after CNN's KFile revealed he shared a post arguing for martial law to keep Trump in office back in 2020. On X, formerly known as Twitter, Ingrassia built his brand as a partisan bomb-thrower, attacking Trump's political rivals often in crude, inflammatory, and racially charged terms in the last two years. Ingrassia referred to former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley as an 'insufferable bitch,' mocking her full name in racially-charged taunts. He wrote a well-publicized blog post falsely alleging that Haley could not serve as president or vice president because her parents were not US citizens at the time of her birth. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was also a frequent target. Ingrassia branded him with nicknames like 'DeSatan,' 'DeMeatball,' and 'Dehomo.' He also went after DeSantis' wife, Casey, and his spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw, calling them both 'harlots.' He reposted a tweet that said Kamala Harris should 'seek a kitchen job, not POTUS.' He mocked Harris' campaign appearances, writing, 'Sounds like she decided to be black again!' On X, Ingrassia was a frequent contributor to Spaces, a live audio chatroom. In one conversation in March 2023 on education, Ingrassia said education reform should prioritize straight White men. 'You'd be focused on getting – maximizing – getting your top students and focusing on elevating the high IQ section of your demographics. So, you know, basically young men, straight White men, in particular, would have to be the focus,' said Ingrassia. CNN has also found that Ingrassia has deeper ties than previously known to white nationalist figure and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. He blasted the decision to ban Fuentes from the platform X and argued to reinstate him in an April 2023 Substack post titled 'Free Nick Fuentes.' Just a week earlier, Ingrassia was a participant in a 24-hour X Space hosted by the antisemitic anonymous account Chief Trumpster that advertised an interview with Fuentes. Speaking before Fuentes went on an anti-Israel rant, Ingrassia attacked the conservative organization Turning Point USA, which itself is a frequent target of criticism from Fuentes and his organization, the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), for being what they called too pro-Israel and insufficiently pro-White. In June 2024, Ingrassia was photographed in attendance at a rally in support of Fuentes in Detroit by The Intercept's Amanda Moore, who tracks the far-right via her Substack 'The Turtle Diaries.' Fuentes was in Detroit for the annual America First Political Action Conference, which holds its conference at the same time as Turning Point USA's conference, which Ingrassia's Twitter feed shows he attended. Ingrassia disputed to The Intercept and NPR in May that his attendance at the rally was intentional. 'I had no knowledge of who organized the event, observed for 5-10 minutes, then left,' he told NPR. Footage reviewed and obtained by CNN shows he was there listening to speakers ahead of Fuentes' arrival and shows him moving to the front to see Fuentes as he enters, appearing to smile. Ingrassia later can be seen leaving the rally with a woman after several minutes. And less than a day earlier, Ingrassia was defending Fuentes on his public X account after the White nationalist was denied entry to TPUSA's conference –- calling Fuentes being kicked out of the event 'not good' and an 'awful decision' in tweets. There is also evidence that Ingrassia agreed with some of the critiques of Turning Point USA and possibly the group's support of Israel. In the April 2023 Twitter Space that advertised the interview with Fuentes, Ingrassia criticized TPUSA for not being 'based' enough –- a slang term often used to signal agreement or approval for right-wing ideas – and claimed the organization was ineffective at winning elections. There is also a history of anti-Israel sentiment in posts from Ingrassia's podcast, 'Right on Point,' that mirrored anti-Israel rhetoric on the far-right. On December 22, 2020, the podcast's now-deleted Twitter account posted, 'Stop shilling for Israel, @GOP,' and criticized US foreign aid with a tweet falsely stating, 'The $500 trillion to Israel adds salt to the wound,' according to a review of deleted tweets obtained by CNN. The account also commented on three tweets from Fuentes regarding alleged fraud in the 2020 election and tweeted at him twice. One of the tweets from the podcast quote tweeted Fuentes' writing of the need to 'destroy the GOP' to make a true 'America First' party in December. The account added in a comment that it was time for Trump to declare martial law to secure his reelection.
Reuters
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
US farm agency finds safety issues at top research site after whistleblower complaints
WASHINGTON, June 26 - The Department of Agriculture found significant safety issues at its top U.S. research facility in an investigation of 2023 whistleblower complaints about the state of the site, the Office of Special Counsel said in a letter sent to the White House. The Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., is the agency's flagship research site spanning nearly 7,000 acres (2,833 hectares) and houses labs studying climate change, invasive insects, animal genomics and more. Reuters exclusively reported in May 2023 that BARC workers had filed complaints that unsafe work conditions, ranging from broken fire alarms and ventilation systems to wild indoor temperature swings, were impeding research and endangering staff. Experts have warned that declining government investment in agricultural research threatens the U.S. position as a leading agricultural innovator. The investigation, ordered by the Office of Special Counsel in 2023, substantiated many of the whistleblower allegations and found "pervasive safety deficiencies," including excess grime, damaged flooring, mold and a lack of potable water, according to a letter sent from the OSC to President Donald Trump on Wednesday. The poor condition of the facility was caused by inadequate funding, understaffing, a lack of necessary tools and equipment and the absence of a maintenance plan, the letter said. The investigation did not find that the poor conditions were hindering research, the letter said. BARC workers told Reuters of incidents including a plumbing leak in 2022 that had ruined records and data and that issues such as inoperable fire alarms pulled staff time away from research to conduct fire patrols and other tasks. The agency has taken some corrective actions to address the issues, including hiring a new director for the facility and drafting a plan to move employees to fewer and more modernized buildings on the site, the letter said. Trump's administration has proposed to cut funds to USDA research agencies and the agency's research arm has lost hundreds of staff under efforts to shrink the cost and size of the federal government.
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.'
