Trump Taps 'Comically Unfit' Election Denier to Head Key Legal Ethics Office
"Leading the Office of Special Counsel requires independence and experience," said one watchdog. "Paul Ingrassia seemingly has neither of these things."
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday nominated a far-right former podcast host with white supremacist views who called for martial law to keep Trump in power after his 2020 election loss to lead a key legal ethics office.
Trump tapped 30-year-old Paul Ingrassia—who is currently serving as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security—to head the Office of Special Counsel, an independent investigative and prosecutorial agency tasked with enforcing ethics laws and protecting federal whistleblowers.
"Paul is a highly respected attorney, writer, and Constitutional Scholar, who has done a tremendous job serving as my White House Liaison for Homeland Security," Trump wrote Thursday on his Truth Social network. "Paul holds degrees from both Cornell Law School and Fordham University, where he majored in Mathematics and Economics, graduating near the top of his class."
Critics, however, had a different assessment of Ingrassia's qualifications.
Hampton Dellinger, the previous OSC chief, was initially fired by Trump in February but was temporarily reinstated via court order before being fired again after he began investigating the administration's mass layoffs of federal workers under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Dellinger dropped his legal challenge in March and announced that "my time as special counsel... is now over."
The OSC enforces the Hatch Act, which restricts the political activity of civilian executive branch employees. In 2021, the agency found that 13 senior Trump aides violated the law by campaigning for the president's failed 2020 reelection bid.
At that time, Ingrassia and his sister Olivia Ingrassia were hosting the "Right on Point" podcast. As Trump stoked the conspiracy theory that Democrats stole the election, Ingrassia amplified the president's "Big Lie" and called for authoritarian measures to keep him in the White House.
On December 12, 2020, the podcast's handle on its Twitter page was renamed "Stop the Steal HQ." The account reposted a tweet from prolific white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes with the added message, "Time for @realDonaldTrump to declare martial law and secure his re-election!"
Ingrassia has expressed his own white supremacist views, including the assertion that "exceptional white men are not only the builders of Western civilization, but are the ones most capable of appreciating the fruits of our heritage." He also replied to a call for slavery reparations by demanding that the descendants of slaves "pay reparations to the descendants of slave owners" and advocated replacing the "treasonous" Ukrainian flag with the Confederate battle flag under penalty of "serious fines."
During the 2024 Republican presidential primaries, Trump boosted a false birther smear by Ingrassia that Nikki Haley—the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador during the first Trump administration—was ineligible to run for president because her parents were not American citizens when she was born. Ingrassia posted several racist aspersions of Haley's Americanness, which have been archived by freelance journalist Jason Hart.
In March, Daily Dot's Amanda Moore revealed that Ingrassia misrepresented himself as an attorney for more than a year prior to his admission to the bar. During this time, he represented former professional kickboxer, self-described misogynist, and alleged rapist, sex trafficker, and money launderer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate in a civil suit. The Tates deny the charges.
As Moore reported:
As early as May 16, 2023, months before he took the bar exam, Ingrassia referred to himself as "an Associate Attorney at The McBride Law Firm, PLLC" on his personal Substack. But his bio on the site frequently changed. In a July 2023 piece on Tate, he described himself simply as an "associate" at the firm. In August, he referred to himself as a "law clerk." New York state records show that Ingrassia, a 2022 graduate of Cornell Law, took the bar on July 25-26, 2023, under his given name, Paolo Ingrassia. While Ingrassia received his results in October 2023, he was not admitted to the New York State Bar until July 30, 2024.
Responding to his nomination, Ingrassia wrote Thursday on X that "it's the highest honor to have been nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel under President Trump!"
"As special counsel, my team and I will make every effort to restore competence and integrity to the Executive Branch—with priority on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal workforce, and revitalize the rule of law and fairness in Hatch Act enforcement," he added.
"This is a pattern with the president's picks for watchdogs: partisan yeasayers whose willingness to stand up to the administration is questionable at best."
However, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a nonpartisan watchdog, said Friday: "Leading the Office of Special Counsel requires independence and experience. Paul Ingrassia seemingly has neither of these things."
"This is a pattern with the president's picks for watchdogs: partisan yeasayers whose willingness to stand up to the administration is questionable at best," POGO added.
Conservative writer Bobby Miller said on X that "the most insane thing about the Paul Ingrassia appointment is that he's been tapped to lead the Office of Special Counsel, an ethics watchdog tasked with enforcing laws that protect federal employees from abuse and safeguard the government from politicization."
"No one's even pretending that this Andrew Tate fanboy, Putin stooge, and martial law enthusiast would do anything even close to the job description," Miller added.
