House Dems warn Trump’s special counsel pick is anathema to job’s duties

The top Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform and Judiciary committees called on their Senate colleagues to reject President Trump’s choice to serve at the Office of Special Counsel, arguing that Paul Ingrassia’s extremist views and friends disqualify him from a position traditionally dedicated to guarding against politicization.

Trump nominated Ingrassia last month, after a legal battle that culminated in the firing of then-Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger in March. Ingrassia briefly served as White House liaison to the Justice Department, but transferred to the Homeland Security Department following reported clashes with another top aide within the attorney general’s office.

The Office of Special Counsel safeguards merit principles in the nonpartisan civil service, protects whistleblowers and enforces the Hatch Act.

In a letter to Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., and ranking member Gary Peters, D-Mich., Reps. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee and House Judiciary Committee, respectively, argued that Ingrassia’s punitive view of federal workers, as evidenced by his advocacy for the purge of those who investigated and prosecuted the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, disqualifies him for the role of special counsel.

“Mr. Ingrassia has made clear his disdain for the Constitution and the rule of law,” Garcia and Raskin wrote. “In 2020, he called for martial law to overturn a free and fair democratic election—an authoritarian impulse that alone should disqualify him from any position of public trust . . . He called for President Trump to ‘expressly name, in a public proclamation, any judge and prosecutor involved in the J6 scam—and call on them to resign from their offices, and pressure Congress to undertake impeachment proceedings against them if they do not cooperate.”

Raskin and Garcia also highlighted Ingrassia’s association with white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, as well as Andrew Tate, a conservative social media influencer who has been charged with rape and sex trafficking in multiple countries.

The House lawmakers argued that Ingrassia is too “blindly loyal” to Trump to effectively enforce the Hatch Act, which restricts federal employees and political appointees’ political activity, or federal laws aimed at protecting whistleblowers from political retaliation. Watchdog organizations and whistleblower protection groups raised similar concerns shortly following Ingrassia’s nomination.

“Mr. Ingrassia’s nomination is not about restoring integrity,” they wrote. “It is part of a concerted effort by President Trump to traumatize the federal workforce and consolidate unchecked power. It emerges from a broader effort by this administration to impose ideological purity tests in which devotion to one individual matters more than fidelity to the Constitution and the American people. President Trump wants to appoint Mr. Ingrassia because he knows that this nominee will treat treasonous, secessionist rhetoric as acceptable political discourse; reward extremism instead of condemning it; and work to tear down, not build up, the democratic institutions we have sworn to protect.”