Trump nominee Paul Ingrassia drops Special Counsel bid

Paul Ingrassia, whom President Donald Trump had nominated to lead the Office of the Special Counsel, withdrew from Senate consideration for that post on Tuesday night after new controversy over a series of racist text messages he reportedly sent that included him saying he had a “Nazi streak.“

Ingrassia’s nomination was already considered doomed in the Senate, where Trump’s Republican Party holds a majority, and where multiple key GOP senators said they would not vote to confirm far-right former podcaster as Special Counsel.

“I will be withdrawing myself from Thursday’s [Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee] hearing to lead the Office of Special Counsel because unfortunately I do not have enough Republican votes at this time,” Ingrassia wrote in a post on the social media site X.

“I appreciate the overwhelming support that I have received throughout this process and will continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again!”

Three Republican senators on the Homeland Security Committee said earlier that they would oppose Ingrassia’s nomination, which would have meant the nomination would have effectively died in that committee, and not gone to a vote by the full Senate

“He’s not going to pass,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters earlier Tuesday. 

Politico reported on Monday that the 30-year-old Ingrassia, in January 2024, “told a group of fellow Republicans in a text chain the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be ‘tossed into the seventh circle of hell’ and said he has a Nazi streak.'”

The outlet said that a month earlier, Ingrassia had used an Italian slur for Black people to say that “every single one” of several holidays related to Black people “needs to be eviscerated.”

“No moulignon holidays … From kwanza [sic] to mlk jr day to black history month to Juneteenth,” he wrote, according to Politico.

“In February 2024, Ingrassia wrote: ‘We need competent white men in positions of leadership. … The founding fathers were wrong that all men are created equal … We need to reject that part of our heritage,’ ” the outlet reported.

Ingrassia, who is the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, was previously investigated in connection with an incident in late July in which he told a lower-ranking female colleague on a business trip that she would be sharing a hotel room with him, Politico reported last week.

Ingrassia’s lawyer said that a probe conducted by DHS’s human resources department found no wrongdoing.