Trump nominee Paul Ingrassia drops Special Counsel bid

Paul Ingrassia, nominated by President Donald Trump Special Legal ConsultancyHe withdrew from Senate consideration of that mandate on Tuesday night following new controversy over a series of racist text messages reportedly involving him.Nazi line.“

Ingrassia’s nomination was already viewed as doomed in the Senate, where Trump’s Republican Party has a majority and several leading GOP senators have said they will not vote to confirm the far-right former podcaster as Special Counsel.

“I will withdraw from Thursday’s meeting [Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee] “I have a hearing to chair the Office of Special Counsel because unfortunately I don’t have enough Republican votes right now,” Ingrassia wrote in a post on social media site X.

“I appreciate the tremendous support I have received throughout this process and will continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again!”

Three Republican senators on the Homeland Security Committee had previously said they would oppose Ingrassia’s nomination; This meant that the nomination would effectively die in that committee and would not be put to a vote by the full Senate.

Senate Majority Leader RS.D. “It’s not going to go away,” John Thune told reporters early Tuesday.

Politico reported Monday that Ingrassia, 30, in January 2024 “told a group of Republican friends in the text chain that the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be ‘thrown to the seventh circle of hell’ and that he had a Nazi streak.”

The publication said that a month ago, Ingrassia used an Italian slur for Black people to say that “every single one” of various Black-related holidays “needs to be eviscerated.”

“No moulignon holiday… from Kwanza [sic] According to Politico, Jr. to add his day to black history month Juneteenth,” he wrote.

“In February 2024, Ingrassia wrote: ‘We need competent white men in leadership positions. …The founding fathers were wrong that all men are created equal…We need to reject this part of our heritage,'” he reported.

Ingrassia, the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, was previously investigated for an incident in late July in which he told a lower-level female colleague on a business trip that she would share a hotel room with him, Politico reported last week.

Ingrassia’s attorney said an investigation by DHS’s human resources department found no wrongdoing.