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nikki haley
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."
May 30, 2025
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.
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'Turning Into the Super PAC Election': Outside Spending Tops $1 Billion for 2024
"Outside group spending this year is almost double the rate of any prior year," noted one critic. "Not a good thing."
Aug 16, 2024
Empowered by the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling allowing unlimited independent financial contributions to support political campaigns, outside spending during the current election cycle has hit a record $1 billion, according to a report published Thursday by the watchdog group OpenSecrets.
"Super PACs and other outside groups that can raise and spend unlimited sums of money have poured about $1.1 billion into 2024 federal elections as of August 15—nearly twice what similar groups spent over the same period in the 2020 presidential election cycle when independent expenditures hit an all-time record," OpenSecrets said.
"More than half of all outside spending during the 2024 cycle—about $585.8 million—has gone into the presidential election, which saw an especially expensive Republican presidential nominating contest," the group added.
"The largest spender, by far, is former President Donald Trump's flagship super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc.," the report notes. "To date, MAGA Inc. has spent about $125.1 million boosting Trump in the presidential election, including nearly $33.2 million attacking his GOP rivals and more than $65.6 million opposing President Joe Biden."
"Future Forward and American Bridge 21st Century, the first and second-largest Democratic hybrid PACs, have spent a combined $74.7 million on the presidential race as of August 15," the publication adds. "Both super PACs pivoted to supporting Vice President Kamala Harris after Biden suspended his campaign last month."
Other key findings in the report include:
- Americans for Prosperity (AFP) Action, a super PAC at the center of a network of conservative donors and activists led by billionaire Charles Koch, spent more than $31.2 million supporting former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley's failed GOP presidential run;
- After Haley's loss, AFP Action pivoted to congressional races, spending nearly $28 million on Republican candidates;
- The pro-cryptocurrency super PAC Fairshake and affiliated groups spent nearly $46 million in the 2024 electoral cycle, more than any other industry-affiliated organization; and
- United Democracy Project, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's super PAC, has spent more than $35 million on congressional races, most of it toward efforts to oust progressive lawmakers the group deems insufficiently supportive of Israel.
AIPAC—which vowed to spend $100 million on 2024 elections—played a key role in defeating Democratic Reps. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.) and Cori Bush (Mo.) in recent primaries. The group has come under fire for attacking Black and brown members of Congress and for supporting Republicans who took part in Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
In an effort to curb the flood of dark money and other outside spending, House Democrats led by Reps. Adam Schiff (Calif.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Dean Phillips (Minn.), and Jim McGovern (Mass.) last year
proposed a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.
" Citizens United was one of the most egregious enablers of special interest money, but it was only the latest in a long line of Supreme Court cases that opened the floodgates," Schiff's office said at the time. "To truly rein in dark money, we must amend our Constitution."
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Baby Ahmad Was Beheaded by Israel, With a US Bomb
On Sunday night, May 26, Ahmad became the symbol of the unspeakable horror of genocide in Gaza after Israel bombed his family tent in north Rafah.
Jun 06, 2024
Ahmad Al-Najjar was a happy one-year old child from Gaza. He loved trampolines, balls, and cats. Born as the youngest of his four siblings, his father liked to call him “bobba” or “baby.”
On Sunday night, May 26, Ahmad became the symbol of the unspeakable horror of genocide in Gaza after Israel bombed his family tent in north Rafah, killing him along with his mother, Faten, his sister, Houda, and his brother, Arkan. Though he was bombed beyond recognition, Ahmad was the most recognizable victim of the tents massacre in Rafah, which burned alive, beheaded, and killed at least 45 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and wounded hundreds others.
Rafah’s tents massacre was one of the most heinous assaults on Palestinian civilians in recent memory. International media and Palestinian sources reported that Israel blitzed the camp where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in tents with seven massive U.S. bombs weighing 2,000 pounds each. Meanwhile, weapons experts toldCNN and The New York Times that they identified the remains of Boeing-made GBU-39s in the rubble.
The bombarded refugee tents had been designated by Israel as a “safe area” for civilians. Rafah was described by UNICEF officials as “a city of children, who have nowhere safe to go in Gaza.” It was believed to be Gaza’s last refuge, and the limit of the Biden administration’s “red line” in Gaza. This grim reality, however, did not prevent the Biden administration from shipping thousands of bombs and weapons to Israel, despite Israel’s repeated threats to invade Rafah. As Israeli forces were pounding Rafah’s refugee camps, U.S. presidential candidate Nikki Haley was in Israel signing “finish them” on the very U.S. bombs that were used to slaughter children in Gaza.
It is the children of Gaza who are forced to live the most unspeakable horrors while being denied the same outrage that Israel’s invented horrors have generated among U.S. and Western politicians
Widely circulated footage from the massacre showed a night of unspeakable horror: bodies burned to ashes, charred and blackened beyond recognition; beheaded children, decapitated and ripped apart by U.S. bombs; parents clutching their dead and burned children, screaming in horror; rescuers pulling people’s charred remains from the burning tents; wounded victims transferred to the hospital with horrific and gruesome injuries.
But the most horrifying footage from that night showed a man holding up what appeared to be the body of a small child who had been beheaded. It belonged to Baby Ahmad, who was wearing black pants and an orange shirt that night. His left leg was also severed in the blast. The family never found Ahmad’s head, and they buried him without it. He was put in the same body bag with his sister Houda. His mother and brother Arkan were buried in separate body bags.
His surviving brothers, Muhammad and Yamin, both saw the ravaged body of their little brother that night. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Ahmad’s father, Abdel Hafez, and two brothers, the only survivors of the family, speak up about the unspeakable horror they had to endure that night.
“I did not believed he was beheaded in the bombing until I saw it with my own eyes at the Tal As-Sultan clinic,” says Abdel Hafez. “His head was separated from his body.”
“It was horrific, very horrific, seeing a beheaded baby, my baby. He was buried without a head,” says the father. “I have been in a state of utter collapse, until this moment.”
The brothers look visibly traumatized. They can hardly invoke the sight of their little brother without trembling and bursting into tears. The family was staying at one of UNRWA’s shelters when Israeli forces pounded the camp. They had been displaced several times before they finally reached Rafah, where they settled in the Tal As-Sultan neighborhood after being forced to flee Khan Younis.
Battling his tears, brother Mohammad, aged 13, relates: “We were playing ball, before sunset. I came back to the shelters. They (Israelis) bombed the shelters, and I heard screams. Then I saw my brother Ahmad at the shelter’s door. His head was severed. His left leg was severed. He was wearing black pants and an orange shirt. I could not bear it, seeing my brother beheaded.”
Speaking through tears, Ahmad’s other brother, Yamin, aged eight, relates his first sight of Ahmad following the Israeli airstrike: “His face was soaked in blood, and his head severed. I wept. I love them so much.”
Standing by the graves of his family, and sharing photos of his slain children in their better and happier days, Ahmad’s father shares his fondest and last memory of his son: his nicknames, “bobba” and “baby,” and his baby word for “give me potato,” which is “baba tata,” and the way he pronounced shekel, the Israeli currency. “The last thing he asked for was a shekel, using his baby word for it: ‘tetel.’ I gave him the shekel, and he hugged me, and then left to buy something with it.”
“He loved playing with cats,” Muhammad recalls, bursting into bitter tears. “When I see his things, the trampoline and ball, and the things he played with, I feel sad and I miss him. I miss them all. I pray for them. I pray that God will have mercy on them, and grant them Heaven.”
Ahmad was one of 15,000 Gazan children murdered by Israel since October 7, a toll that would have been unimaginable without the bottomless supply of U.S. bombs. A new report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor shows that Israel dropped over 70,000 tons of U.S. bombs on Gaza in 200 days, which surpasses that of WWII and the bombings in Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined. It’s also 20 times more than the U.S. dropped on Iraq in six years of war.
Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza by inventing its most outrageous lie, that Hamas fighters beheaded 40 Israeli babies on October 7. Despite being widely debunked, the lie has been repeatedly invoked by Israeli leaders to justify their genocide in Gaza. It has also served as a way to justify U.S. complicity in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, with top U.S. officials, including Joe Biden, along with the mainstream media, echoing it recklessly.
Meanwhile, it is the children of Gaza who are forced to live the most unspeakable horrors while being denied the same outrage that Israel’s invented horrors have generated among U.S. and Western politicians. To cite Ahmad’s father: “They accuse us of beheading babies. But whose head was decapitated? My son, my one-and-a-half year old baby! They severed it completely.”
Update: This piece has been edited to provide more sourcing and accounts as to the types of U.S.-made bombs that Israel dropped on Rafah on May 26, 2024.
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