Trump appoints Paul Ingrassia, staffer linked to Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, to senior federal watchdog role
Paul Ingrassia has also criticized U.S. support for Israel after Oct. 7.
Paul Ingrassia, White House Liaison to the Justice Department, left, announces the release of brothers Andrew and Matthew Valentin outside of the DC Central Detention Facility on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump issued pardons to over 1500 people who were charged with crimes related to the event. (Pete Kiehart for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
(JTA) — President Donald Trump has appointed Paul Ingrassia, a right-wing attorney and onetime podcaster who has defended avowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes and worked with antisemitic influencer Andrew Tate, to a new senior role as head of the United States Office of Special Counsel.
It is the second promotion this week for a federal staffer with a record involving antisemitism. Kingsley Wilson, a Department of Defense official who has shared neo-Nazi conspiracy theories about Jewish lynching victim Leo Frank, recently ascended to Pentagon press secretary.
“Paul is a highly respected attorney, writer, and Constitutional Scholar, who has done a tremendous job serving as my White House Liaison for Homeland Security,” Trump wrote on his social network Truth Social late Thursday in announcing the appointment. “Congratulations, Paul!”
Ingrassia’s writings and posts have demonstrated a willingness to embrace influential antisemitic figures in the online world. In April 2023 he wrote a blog post entitled “Free Nick Fuentes,” urging X/Twitter’s owner Elon Musk to reinstate the avowed white supremacist and Holocaust denier to the site (as well as the self-proclaimed Nazi rapper Ye). His argument rested on free speech grounds and did not mention antisemitism; Ingrassia has also been identified as having attended a 2024 Fuentes rally at which Fuentes stated, “Down with Israel.”
Ingrassia is particularly close with Andrew Tate, a popular “manosphere” influencer, having served on his legal team in a defamation lawsuit Tate and his brother filed in Florida and posted multiple photos of himself posing with the Tate brothers. Ingrassia has also served in a publicist role for the Tates, at one point taking credit for booking them on Tucker Carlson’s online show. Tate has a history of praising Hamas and its leaders in addition to facing charges of rape and sex trafficking in Europe; Ingrassia has called him “an extraordinary human being.”
Ingrassia has also criticized the U.S. response to the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, writing on social media that day, “The amount of energy everyone has put into condemning Hamas” should “be the same amount of energy we put into condemning our wide open border, which is a war comparable to the attack on Israel in terms of bloodshed — but made worse by the fact that it’s occurring in our very own backyard.” The next day he suggested that the United States needed to choose between caring about Israel and caring about securing the border.
A week later he went further, writing, “I think we could all admit at this stage that Israel/Palestine, much like Ukraine before it, and BLM before that, and covid/vaccine before that, was yet another psyop. But sadly people fell for it.” He also said the U.S. should refuse to admit refugees from either Israel or the Palestinian territories.
Ingrassia was also previously Trump’s liaison to the Department of Justice. He said on X that he would focus on “eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in the federal workforce and revitalize the Rule of Law and Fairness in Hatch Act enforcement.” The Office of Special Counsel is a watchdog organization for federal whistleblowers that monitors government fraud and mismanagement.
A third Trump appointee with antisemitic ties, Ed Martin, recently had his bid for a senior U.S. prosecutor role withdrawn following Senate criticism. Martin had praised a neo-Nazi who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Trump instead assigned Martin to a different Justice Department role overseeing extremism.
Ingrassia himself has also praised the same neo-Nazi, Timothy Hale-Cusanelli. At a 2024 fundraiser for a right-wing group, he called Hale-Cusanelli an “innocent American citizen.” Speaking to NPR recently, Ingrassia said he denounced “any hateful or incendiary remark” Hale-Cusanelli has made, and also said he had attended the Fuentes event by accident.
Another Trump staffer, Office of Management and Budget communications director Rachel Cauley, also supported Hale-Cusaneli, calling his trial a “clown trial” and “complete miscarriage of justice.”
