How Senate Republicans finally said 'no' to Ingrassia

Senate Republicans spent months quietly raising the alarm with the White House about Paul Ingrassia’s nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel before he withdrew from consideration this week.

Members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which was vetting President Donald Trump’s pick, were initially on edge this summer about his comments on social media and perceived lack of qualifications, according to interviews with GOP members of the panel.

Even close Trump allies, including Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, said they dug into his background and were uneasy with what they found. Ingrassia professed to have little memory of inflammatory social media posts and writings when he sat for a meeting with bipartisan committee staff in July, according to three Democratic aides who were present and granted anonymity to discuss the conversation.

Senators reached a breaking point this week after POLITICO reported on texts that showed Ingrassia making racist and antisemitic remarks to fellow Republicans, as he was set to testify before the Senate Homeland committee on Thursday. Ingrassia announced Tuesday evening that he was withdrawing, citing a lack of GOP votes for his confirmation.

“It’s been ongoing for a while,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview Wednesday. “The members on the committee who have met with him and some of the stuff they had come up with during the vetting process, I think, created some -- he had challenges.”

The derailment of Ingrassia’s nomination shows that even some of Trump’s most loyal defenders have limits when it comes to rubber-stamping his administration personnel. In the case of Ingrassia, Republican senators succeeded in blocking the nominee through limited public statements and months of privately putting the White House on notice.

The GOP pushback accelerated in July when he was first scheduled to testify before Senate Homeland Security — a hearing that was ultimately delayed.

In a July 21 meeting with Senate staffers, Ingrassia was asked about a December 2023 social media post where he said “exceptional white men are not only the builders of Western civilization but are the ones most capable of appreciating the fruits of our heritage,” according to the three aides in the room. Ingrassia responded by pointing to Leonardo da Vinci as an example of a great artist but then trailed off, the aides said.

“His most typical response was that he’s posted so many things he couldn’t recall,” said one of the aides.

Just before he was set to testify on July 24, his appearance was postponed.

Ingrassia and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Sen. Rand Paul, the chair of Senate Homeland Security, declined to comment.

As Senate staff continued to vet Ingrassia, Republican offices backchanneled with the White House about the nominee’s dimming chances of confirmation.

Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican on Senate Homeland Security, said in an interview this week his office privately signaled to the White House “at a staff level” that he would not support Ingrassia’s confirmation.

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican on the panel, said in an interview he had “rolling conversations” with the White House about “what do I think about the nomination.” Hawley said that from the beginning his concerns were focused on a perceived lack of qualifications to lead the office, which investigates federal employee whistleblower complaints and discrimination claims. Ingrassia, a conservative lawyer and activist, would have been two decades younger and less experienced than recent leaders at the Office of Special Counsel.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Scott, whose home state of Florida has a large Jewish population, said in an interview this week that digging from Hill staff had turned up a litany of remarks that troubled him.

“We just reviewed things he had said in the past,” Scott said. “It was just a lot of antisemitic tropes.”

Scrutiny of the nomination ramped up earlier this month, after POLITICO reported that Ingrassia, who has been serving as White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, was investigated for harassment involving a lower-ranking colleague. The colleague filed a complaint against him before retracting it. Ingrassia’s attorney denied the allegations.

On Monday, POLITICO reported on a text chain that showed Ingrassia making a number of offensive remarks, including that he had a “Nazi streak” and that the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday “should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs.” A lawyer for Ingrassia did not confirm the authenticity of the texts and said they “could be manipulated or are being provided with material context omitted.”

Hours before Ingrassia withdrew from consideration Tuesday, Paul in a POLITICO interview vented about Trump’s handling of the nomination and said Republicans should “man up” and bring their concerns about Ingrassia to the president.

“I’m waiting to see a little courage,” Paul said.

But Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), another member of the Homeland Security panel, denied that lawmakers had been reluctant to voice their concerns.

“Several of us … had direct conversations with the White House for a couple of months, actually,” he said.