The far-right conspiracy theorist who President Donald Trump chose as his government watchdog is no fan of bureaucrats.
Paul Ingrassia, Trump’s pick to lead the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC), which investigates and prosecutes wrongdoing within the executive branch, took aim at federal workers in his personal Substack in February.
“All the worst elements of human nature—arrogance and ego, combined with laziness and stupidity—become magnified in a bureaucratic government system,“ he wrote.
”The inefficiencies yield slowness; the workers themselves acclimate to doing little of anything of substance, always on the taxpayer’s dime (and hence justifies Elon’s recent ask among all Executive Branch employees to list five things they achieved over the past week)," he said in reference former Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk’s directive in March.
Ingrassia, 30, is a recent law school graduate with minimal legal experience and no government experience. The Trump loyalist was set to appear at a Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, but it was delayed after committee members requested more time to review his nomination, The Washington Post reported.
Ingrassia is a far-right political commentator who called on Trump to declare martial law to stay in office following the 2020 election and even called for states to secede if efforts to install Trump failed.
One Republican senator, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, has already said he will oppose Ingrassia’s nomination. He pointed to Ingrassia’s suggestion that Jan. 6 should be a national holiday.
“Anybody who makes the statement ‘January 6 should be a national holiday’ should know they’d never have my support,” Tillis said Wednesday. “That’s a no-brainer.”
As head of the OSC, Ingrassia’s job would include upholding the Hatch Act, a federal law passed in 1939 that aims to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan manner and that federal employees are protected from political coercion. He’d also be entrusted with investigating prohibited personnel practices, including claims of retaliation against whistleblowers.
Nonpartisan watchdog groups have warned senators against confirming Ingrassia, noting his “open hostility” toward federal workers. Ingrassia wrote on conservative site AMAC in November that “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.”
For the last four decades, nonpartisan lawyers with decades of experience have led the OSC. Former OSC chief Hampton Dellinger, whom Trump fired in February, has been practicing law for longer than Ingrassia has been alive. Dellinger was ousted shortly after slamming the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) mass expulsions and attempting to stop the termination of six employees.
Ingrassia has long been loyal to Trump. During his short legal career, he worked for the New York-based McBride law firm, which pledged to combat “the Department of Justice’s malicious prosecution and horrific treatment of January 6th Detainees.”
When radio host Sebastian Gorka rebuked calls for former Vice President Mike Pence to be executed by firing squad for his failure to support the “Stop the Steal” movement, Ingrassia called him “soft” on X. He also said in a now-deleted X post that Pence belonged in the “ninth circle of Hell.”
On Jan. 6, Ingrassia posted a quote from President John F. Kennedy on his podcast account: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible (will) make violent revolution inevitable.”
Ingrassia has also long been associated with extremists. He has claimed that “exceptional white men” built Western civilization and “are the ones most capable of appreciating the fruits of our heritage.” In May 2023, he posted on X that the “descendants of slaves” should “pay reparations to slave owners.” He called the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas “another psyop to distract Americans from celebrating Columbus Day.”
He has also expressed support for alleged human trafficker and self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan. He pushed for white supremacist Nick Fuentes to be reinstated on X after he was kicked off the platform for hate speech. Ingrassia wrote a Substack post in defense of Fuentes titled “Free Nick Fuentes” and called the ban a First Amendment issue. He’s also fawned over Russian President Vladimir Putin for “standing up for traditional Christianity and Western values.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Ingrassia and the White House for comment.
