Unions, good government groups urge rejection of Trump’s OSC nominee

More than 20 federal employee unions, professional associations and good government groups on Monday urged Senate lawmakers to reject President Trump’s pick to serve as the U.S. special counsel over his lack of experience and apparent hostility toward the responsibilities of the Office of Special Counsel.

The coalition, led by the Project on Government Oversight, described the 28-year-old Paul Igrassia as a “demonstrably unserious nominee” for an important and difficult oversight role—protecting whistleblowers from retaliation and federal workers from political coercion.

“By law, the special counsel must be ‘an attorney who, by demonstrated ability, background, training and experience, is especially qualified to carry out the functions of the position,’” the groups wrote. “As head of OSC, the special counsel should be someone who respects federal workers, who will treat them fairly and without bias. 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.”

House lawmakers issued similar warnings to their Senate colleagues last month, highlighting Ingrassia’s support for overturning the 2020 election and his close ties to white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes as well as conservative social media influencer Andrew Tate, who has been charged with rape and sex trafficking in multiple countries.

The coalition warned that Ingrassia, who in a public blog post earlier this year described federal employees as “parasites” and “bugmen” who “leech off the diminishing lifeblood of the dying republic,” would turn OSC’s mission—to protect whistleblowers, safeguard merit system principles and investigate alleged Hatch Act violations—on its head.

“Any notion that Ingrassia would serve civil servants fairly is belied by his prior actions, both within and outside the federal government,” the letter states. “Moving beyond a broad disrespect for civil servants, Ingrassia has explicitly attacked entire swaths of federal employees with whom he disagrees. According to former colleagues, during his very brief stint at the Department of Justice, Ingrassia stated that anyone who worked under former attorneys general Merrick Garland or Bill Barr is unqualified to work for the current Trump administration.”

And in his own writings late last year, Ingrassia said that he does not believe in the merit system principles that he would be tasked with upholding as special counsel.

“If the president finds some number of these bureaucrats wanting in their duties, he should have every right to terminate them at-will,” Ingrassia wrote. “This is not a revolutionary development, but a return to constitutional governance consistent with the letter and spirit of the document’s original meaning. The executive power is fully vested in a president of the United States under Article II—not an unelected ‘civil service.’ The idea that civil servants are ‘apolitical’ has always been hogwash, a myth propounded by these very same people who never want to be held responsible for anything.”

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is slated to host Ingrassia, along with five other nominees, at a confirmation hearing Thursday.