Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans. Yesterday, a nominee had to withdraw after texts showed him acknowledging a "Nazi streak."
Paul Ingrassia withdrew himself from consideration to serve as the head of the Office of the Special Counsel ahead of a scheduled Thursday hearing after several GOP senators warned they would vote against him.
Why it matters: Ingrassia's history of controversial statements — compounded by new reporting of racist text messages — even made some of President Trump's close allies on the Hill unwilling to back him.
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Catch up quick: Ingrassia is an attorney and 30-year-old, right-wing podcaster.
His nomination has been in jeopardy from nearly the start. He bombed an early meeting with committee staff back in July, Axios reported at the time.
Senators' concerns were only amplified by new reporting from Politico this week that he texted in a GOP text chain that he has a "Nazi streak" and that Martin Luther King Jr.'s holiday should be "tossed into the seventh circle of hell."
Paul Ingrassia, President Donald Trump’s embattled nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, told a group of fellow Republicans in a text chain the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and said he has “a Nazi streak,” according to a text chat viewed by POLITICO.
Ingrassia, who has a Senate confirmation hearing scheduled Thursday, made the remarks in a chain with a half-dozen Republican operatives and influencers, according to the chat.
“MLK Jr. was the 1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs,” Ingrassia wrote in January 2024, according to the chat.
“Jesus Christ,” one participant responded.
Using an Italian slur for Black people, Ingrassia wrote a month earlier in the group chat seen by POLITICO: “No moulignon holidays … From kwanza [sic] to mlk jr day to black history month to Juneteenth,” then added: “Every single one needs to be eviscerated.”
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In May 2024, the group was bantering about a Trump campaign staffer who’d been hired in Georgia and was working on outreach to minority voters, when Ingrassia suggested she didn’t show enough deference to the Founding Fathers being white, according to the chat.
“Paul belongs in the Hitler Youth with Ubergruppenfuhrer Steve Bannon,” the first participant in the chat wrote, referring to the paramilitary rank in Nazi Germany and the Republican strategist. POLITICO is not naming the participants to protect the identity of those interviewed for this article.
“I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it,” Ingrassia responded, according to the chain. One of the people in the text group said in an interview that Ingrassia’s comment was not taken as a joke, and three participants pushed back against Ingrassia during the text exchange that day.
He later graduated from Cornell Law School in 2022, where he served as the senior online editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy.
While studying law, Ingrassia was involved in conservative student circles and wrote for right-leaning outlets such as The Daily Caller and The Gateway Pundit.
He was twice named a fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank known for its advocacy of traditionalist and nationalist perspectives within the Republican Party.
