CNN
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The man President Donald Trump wants to put in charge of protecting whistleblowers – and rooting out government corruption – is a 30-year-old lawyer with barely a year of government experience and a history of racist invective, conspiratorial rants, and affinity for a well-known White nationalist and Holocaust denier.
Paul Ingrassia, whom Trump nominated in late May to lead the Office of Special Counsel, brands himself as “President Trump’s favorite writer” after Trump shared his comments close to 100 times last year on social media.
Admitted to the bar only last summer, Ingrassia, 30, held a brief White House internship during Trump’s first term. This year, Ingrassia first worked as a White House liaison at the Justice Department before reportedly being pushed out and reassigned to the Department of Homeland Security, where he helps with staffing the agency.
Now, Ingrassia is up for a much bigger job leading the approximately 110-person OSC. Created after the Watergate scandal, the office has for nearly 50 years been the US government’s one-stop shop for whistleblowers and alleged ethics violations.
The five-year term for the job is structured to span multiple administrations, designed specifically to operate independently from the White House. It also requires Senate confirmation. Ingrassia has yet to be scheduled for a confirmation hearing, leaving US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to continue serving in the role in an acting capacity.
Ingrassia would mark a sharp departure from previous heads of the OSC, a role designed to be politically independent and protect whistleblowers from retaliation. Rather than a long record of managerial or prosecutorial experience, typical of those who previously held the job, Ingrassia brings a fervent loyalty to Trump and a lengthy record of inflammatory statements, only a small portion of which have been previously reported.
CNN’s KFile reviewed hundreds of Ingrassia’s comments between 2019 and 2024, including his social media, his appearances on far-right podcasts, and archived conversations from X Spaces, a livestreamed audio chat room that allows users to host or join real-time discussions.
Last year, on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Ingrassia shared a video of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claiming the US government planned the attacks or let them happen, with Jones boasting in his tweet, “I’ve been exposing 9/11 since before it even happened.”
Ingrassia had defended Jones several months earlier, writing, “WE ALL STAND WITH ALEX JONES!!” in June 2024. He was commenting on a video of Jones crying on his broadcast over fears that his InfoWars media platform could be shut down due to $1.5 billion in judgments against Jones for spreading false claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax.
Ingrassia and his podcast’s X account have also shared comments from notorious White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Ingrassia has argued publicly that “straight White men” are the most intelligent demographic group and should be prioritized in education.
He once co-hosted a podcast that called for martial law and secession after Trump’s 2020 defeat if all legal efforts failed. On the night of January 6, 2021, the podcast account also posted a quote from President John F. Kennedy, reading, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, (will) make violent revolution inevitable.”
Ingrassia, a longtime defender of January 6 participants, was later present for the release of convicted January 6 rioters after Trump commuted their sentences.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security dismissed CNN’s reporting as an “attempted smear campaign” but did not respond to a detailed list of questions or refute any of the documented comments or associations. A DHS spokesperson said Ingrassia “has served President Trump and Secretary Noem exceptionally well at the Department of Homeland Security and will continue to do so as the next head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.”
The White House also provided a statement of support for Ingrassia, and DHS sent a statement from an unnamed senior administration official saying, “He has the support of many Jewish groups, and has been a steadfast advocate for Jewish causes and personnel thus far during his time working for the Trump administration.”
When CNN requested a list of names of the “many Jewish groups” referenced, the spokesperson replied with two names, The Holocaust Council – which does not appear to have a website – and Mort Klein, of the Zionist Organization of America.
As early as 2019, when he was 24, Ingrassia positioned himself as a tenacious pro-Trump commentator online, slowly building a following by lobbing insults at Trump’s Republican rivals and parroting many of the president’s grievances.
After graduating from Cornell Law School in 2022, Ingrassia mostly worked with conservative organizations and as a law clerk at The McBride Law Firm, best known for representing January 6 defendants. Ingrassia contributed as a writer for the conspiracy blog Gateway Pundit, twice served as a fellow at the conservative Claremont Institute, and served on the Board of Advisors for the New York Young Republican Club.
He was also communications director for the conservative National Constitutional Law Union – which bills itself as a counter to the ACLU.
Ingrassia is perhaps best known for his Substack, which was repeatedly shared by Trump on his Truth Social platform. A review of Trump’s Truth Social account found that he mentioned Ingrassia close to 100 times in 2024. Ingrassia wrote glowingly about the Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year, but stopped writing on his Substack shortly after CNN’s KFile revealed he shared a post arguing for martial law to keep Trump in office back in 2020.
On X, formerly known as Twitter, Ingrassia built his brand as a partisan bomb-thrower, attacking Trump’s political rivals often in crude, inflammatory, and racially charged terms in the last two years.
Ingrassia referred to former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley as an “insufferable bitch,” mocking her full name in racially-charged taunts. He wrote a well-publicized blog post falsely alleging that Haley could not serve as president or vice president because her parents were not US citizens at the time of her birth.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was also a frequent target. Ingrassia branded him with nicknames like “DeSatan,” “DeMeatball,” and “Dehomo.” He also went after DeSantis’ wife, Casey, and his spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw, calling them both “harlots.” He reposted a tweet that said Kamala Harris should “seek a kitchen job, not POTUS.” He mocked Harris’ campaign appearances, writing, “Sounds like she decided to be black again!”
On X, Ingrassia was a frequent contributor to Spaces, a live audio chatroom. In one conversation in March 2023 on education, Ingrassia said education reform should prioritize straight White men.
“You’d be focused on getting – maximizing – getting your top students and focusing on elevating the high IQ section of your demographics. So, you know, basically young men, straight White men, in particular, would have to be the focus,” said Ingrassia.
More ties to White nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes
CNN has also found that Ingrassia has deeper ties than previously known to white nationalist figure and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. He blasted the decision to ban Fuentes from the platform X and argued to reinstate him in an April 2023 Substack post titled “Free Nick Fuentes.”
Just a week earlier, Ingrassia was a participant in a 24-hour X Space hosted by the antisemitic anonymous account Chief Trumpster that advertised an interview with Fuentes.
Speaking before Fuentes went on an anti-Israel rant, Ingrassia attacked the conservative organization Turning Point USA, which itself is a frequent target of criticism from Fuentes and his organization, the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), for being what they called too pro-Israel and insufficiently pro-White.
In June 2024, Ingrassia was photographed in attendance at a rally in support of Fuentes in Detroit by The Intercept’s Amanda Moore, who tracks the far-right via her Substack “The Turtle Diaries.”
Fuentes was in Detroit for the annual America First Political Action Conference, which holds its conference at the same time as Turning Point USA’s conference, which Ingrassia’s Twitter feed shows he attended.
Ingrassia disputed to The Intercept and NPR in May that his attendance at the rally was intentional. “I had no knowledge of who organized the event, observed for 5-10 minutes, then left,” he told NPR.
Footage reviewed and obtained by CNN shows he was there listening to speakers ahead of Fuentes’ arrival and shows him moving to the front to see Fuentes as he enters, appearing to smile. Ingrassia later can be seen leaving the rally with a woman after several minutes.
And less than a day earlier, Ingrassia was defending Fuentes on his public X account after the White nationalist was denied entry to TPUSA’s conference –- calling Fuentes being kicked out of the event “not good” and an “awful decision” in tweets.
There is also evidence that Ingrassia agreed with some of the critiques of Turning Point USA and possibly the group’s support of Israel.
In the April 2023 Twitter Space that advertised the interview with Fuentes, Ingrassia criticized TPUSA for not being “based” enough –- a slang term often used to signal agreement or approval for right-wing ideas – and claimed the organization was ineffective at winning elections.
There is also a history of anti-Israel sentiment in posts from Ingrassia’s podcast, “Right on Point,” that mirrored anti-Israel rhetoric on the far-right.
On December 22, 2020, the podcast’s now-deleted Twitter account posted, “Stop shilling for Israel, @GOP,” and criticized US foreign aid with a tweet falsely stating, “The $500 trillion to Israel adds salt to the wound,” according to a review of deleted tweets obtained by CNN.
The account also commented on three tweets from Fuentes regarding alleged fraud in the 2020 election and tweeted at him twice. One of the tweets from the podcast quote tweeted Fuentes’ writing of the need to “destroy the GOP” to make a true “America First” party in December.
The account added in a comment that it was time for Trump to declare martial law to secure his reelection.
