A number of Jewish organizations the Trump administration said had backed the president’s pick for chief of an internal watchdog just clarified they’ve never even heard of the guy—who has ties to a white nationalist Holocaust denier.
President Donald Trump has tipped 30-year-old lawyer Paul Ingrassia, currently White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, to head up the Office of Special Counsel, responsible for protecting whistleblowers as well as investigating and prosecuting wrongdoing within the executive branch of government.
A far-right political commentator with minimal legal experience, Ingrassia not only briefly represented accused human trafficker Andrew Tate and once called on Trump to declare martial law following the president’s 2020 electoral loss, but also has known ties to white supremacist Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
Apparently mindful of their nominee’s colorful resumé, White House told CNN last week that Ingrassia in fact has the backing of “many Jewish groups,” by which it then clarified it meant just four organizations.
The network has now contacted those groups. Three said they’d never heard of him, while a fourth initially denied backing him, before getting back in touch several days later to say he had their support.
CNN had previously reported not only on Ingrassia’s ties to Fuentes, which included him attending a 2024 rally for the white nationalist commentator in Detroit, but also his own history of racist remarks and pushing conspiracy theories online.
As a case in point, Ingrassia previously tweeted about the Oct. 7, 2023 attack against Israel by Hamas terrorists, which claimed more than 1,200 lives, to describe the atrocity as a “psyop.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment. The administration previously having described Ingrassia as a “steadfast advocate for Jewish causes and personnel” in statements to CNN.
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