Turbulent

The turbulent trajectory of Trump’s ‘Nazi streak’ acolyte

Paul Ingrassia’s almost Trumpian survival demonstrates how ideological affinity and personal loyalty can outweigh all other considerations in this administration.

By Daniel Lippman, Daniel Barnes and Sophia Cai

A conservative activist who had caught Donald Trump’s attention with flattery via Substack ahead of the 2024 presidential election imagined a prominent role for himself in a future administration.

In a group chat with half a dozen Republican operatives and influencers, Paul Ingrassia in October 2023 texted: “Trump needs me as his chief of staff,” according to a screenshot obtained by POLITICO.

“I’m not kidding.”

Ingrassia, then in his late 20s, had only graduated from Cornell Law School the year before and had yet to be admitted to the New York Bar.

The coveted job, of course, went to veteran political operator Susie Wiles, who typically shies from the limelight.

But Ingrassia had gained confidence about his potential path to the White House after his Substack columns, which included arguments that Trump would defeat Ron DeSantis in the primary, caught the then-candidate’s eye.

Trump responded with handwritten notes and Ingrassia posted them on X.

“Great seeing you at Bedminster — young and handsome,” Trump wrote to Ingrassia.

Another note, also posted on the social media site in the summer of 2023, read: “Paul, Great seeing you — the man behind the great writings — you are looking good.”

Ingrassia, 30, would eventually land a series of administration jobs, though not as the president’s top aide. He’s now known in Washington for withdrawing from a Senate confirmation process to lead a federal whistleblower agency after a POLITICO report in October revealed racist comments Ingrassia made in the same group chat where he mused about being chief of staff.

Ingrassia and his lawyer, Edward Andrew Paltzik, did not respond to requests for comment for this article. In October, Paltzik did not confirm the texts were authentic, saying they could be manipulated and were provided without proper context.

The GOP-led rejection of Ingrassia’s nomination was a rare break between the administration and a largely compliant Congress. It didn’t result in his ouster. Instead, Ingrassia got an invitation to meet Trump at the White House and another administration post — this time at the General Services Administration that manages federal buildings, IT services and government procurement.

Alan Jacoby, the founder of Patriot Cigar Company who met Ingrassia through New York Republican circles several years ago, said Ingrassia’s goal before Trump was reelected was to get a position in the administration.

“We don’t always agree when it comes to political issues even though we’re both conservatives. However, his support for President Trump is unmatched,” he said.

Ingrassia’s almost Trumpian survival demonstrates how ideological affinity and personal loyalty can outweigh all other considerations in this administration. And while top officials in the Republican Party and White House have split between denouncing bigoted language exhibited by officials like Ingrassia — who said he has a “Nazi streak” according to the texts — and forming a defensive line around supporters, the messages don’t appear to have hurt his official standing.

GSA spokesperson Marianne Copenhaver hailed Ingrassia’s “outstanding service” in a statement about his new role as GSA’s deputy general counsel just weeks after GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said he wouldn’t support his nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel because he didn’t understand “how anybody can be antisemitic in this country.”

The schism remains at the heart of an unsettled question about MAGA’s future and whether a Trump-style successor can emerge when others who’ve deployed a similarly bombastic and divisive approach to leadership have failed. Where many young Republican staffers lost government or party positions when inflammatory texts were made public in a different POLITICO investigation involving a separate text chain this year, Ingrassia got another senior administration post. In that sense he’s like Trump himself, who only gained more staying power during everything from the Access Hollywood video to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.

For this article about Ingrassia’s journey from a once-obscure MAGA acolyte to a Trump world fixture, POLITICO spoke to more than two dozen administration officials, senators, Capitol Hill staffers and others who know Ingrassia. POLITICO also reviewed contemporaneous messages of former law school classmates and fellow conservative influencers. Many of the people were granted anonymity to speak candidly about Ingrassia because of retaliation concerns or because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Law school controversy

Ingrassia’s time in the administration has echoes of his law school experience.

He had trouble fitting into his cohort at Cornell Law, three former classmates told POLITICO, describing him as a quiet and closely guarded person.

But Ingrassia did draw attention — if unwanted — during his time at Cornell. In the wake of the 2020 election, while classes were partially virtual due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a classmate shared with other students a screenshot of a Twitter post by Ingrassia’s mother repeating claims that Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election, according to two of the former classmates.

“For a little change of pace, here’s Paul’s batshit crazy mom,” the classmate who posted the screenshot wrote in a GroupMe chat for the entire Cornell Law class of 2022, according to the two classmates in the chat. The post was swiftly deleted.

“Following some sage counsel here and issuing an unqualified apology. We obviously have some strong disagreements, but ‘your mom is batshit crazy’ is obviously well over the line and it’s incredibly unfortunate that I posted it here. My bad,” the classmate wrote a short time later, according to a copy of the message.

Reached for comment by POLITICO, Ingrassia’s mother, Donna Gallo Ingrassia, a Long Island real estate broker, defended standing up for what she believes.

“We are a family who stands up for what we believe in even if it is against the popular viewpoint,” she said in an email. “We fought for my daughter’s former classmate Gabby Petito [who was killed in Wyoming in 2021], fought against vaccine and mask mandates, we fought against the steal of 2020 and we campaigned hard for President Trump.”

A rocky entry

Years later, Ingrassia had the backing of his mother who trekked to the Hill to confront Democratic lawmakers who criticized her son’s nomination. “Obviously, I am going to advocate for my kids,” she told POLITICO. “People who do not ‘go along to get along’ are usually called ‘crazy.’”

Ingrassia’s bond with Trump only strengthened after those handwritten notes Ingrassia posted on X in 2023. In time, he would call himself “Trump’s favorite writer” after Trump reposted more than 100 of his Substack articles.

So when Trump took office a second time, Ingrassia was poised to thrive. He landed a position as White House liaison to the Justice Department. While most incoming Trump appointees were partying at balls on the night of Trump’s inauguration, Ingrassia spent more than an hour inside the D.C. Central Detention Facility.

He emerged to announce that two people who had pled guilty to assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol were being released after receiving pardons from the president.

It is “a monumental moment in our history,” Ingrassia told reporters.

But Ingrassia’s time at DOJ quickly went downhill.

Inside the department, he clashed with then-DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle after Ingrassia reportedly complained to the president that Mizelle was not working to advance his agenda. DOJ and Mizelle declined to comment.

It didn’t help Ingrassia that he lacked a relationship with Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to a DOJ official. That official added that Ingrassia did not generally know anyone in the department.

The official said he believes Ingrassia was a “Day 1” person sent by the White House, as the new administration placed loyalists across the government. The official added that people in the department knew Trump had done social media posts on Ingrassia’s writings.

The connection wasn’t enough. A month after he arrived at Justice, he was reassigned to the Department of Homeland Security. But his time there was even rockier.

Ingrassia seemed to want to build a rapport with colleagues, frequently attending DHS and administration happy hours to network, according to two people who saw him at the events. Despite his brashness on social media, Ingrassia was reserved in social settings, said the two people.

The scandals

But Ingrassia quickly encountered problems at DHS. In July, he took a work trip to Florida where he shared a Ritz-Carlton hotel room with a female colleague. An internal investigation ensued. The attorney for Ingrassia and a DHS spokesperson said the investigation into him ended and cleared him. His attorney denied wrongdoing.

Ingrassia sued POLITICO for defamation in Warren County, Virginia, in October after POLITICO reported on the Florida trip.

Ingrassia faced additional scrutiny over the summer after Trump nominated him in May to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates complaints from federal whistleblowers.

A day after the nomination, NPR reported that Ingrassia had called far-right influencer Andrew Tate an “extraordinary man” and “the embodiment of the ancient ideal of excellence.” Before joining the administration Ingrassia worked at a law firm Tate hired. Tate, who has been an advocate for “Holocaust revisionism,” has faced rape and human trafficking charges. He has denied the charges, which are pending.

On Capitol Hill, staffers on the Senate Homeland Security Committee started looking into Ingrassia’s background. Three Democratic Senate aides said in an interview that a staff vetting session on July 21 went poorly for Ingrassia. They said they were troubled he didn’t provide his full biographical information and that he pushed back when asked about the omission of numerous posts, podcasts, interviews and deleted writings.

Several staffers from Republican offices also asked tough questions of Ingrassia. Among them were his views on the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, which he had called “another psyop to distract Americans from celebrating Columbus Day.”

Just before Ingrassia was set to testify on July 24, his appearance was postponed.

“This big thing for our state is, he’s had some statements about antisemitism,” Scott, a member of the committee, said at the time.

In August, Ingrassia also lost a key ally at the White House. Sergio Gor, another controversial Trump aide who had been serving as presidential personnel director, was nominated to serve as ambassador to India in a shakeup. Gor, who had drawn the personal antipathy of Elon Musk for trying to wrest back control of agencies after a heated March Cabinet meeting, worked closely with Ingrassia and supported his nomination, according to three administration officials. His departure deprived Ingrassia of an influential defender.

Replacing Gor was Dan Scavino, a White House deputy chief of staff and one of Trump’s closest aides, with whom Ingrassia was not as close, according to two of the administration officials.

Ingrassia still had other defenders in the West Wing, including Trump aide Natalie Harp, according to two administration officials. Harp is known as Trump’s “human printer” because she prints out articles for him to read, including many of Ingrassia’s Substack pieces.

“Natalie Harp in the White House is a big advocate of Paul’s,” one of the officials said.

Gor and Harp were natural allies. Like Ingrassia, they rose to their positions thanks to their fierce loyalty to Trump. Like Ingrassia, they lacked establishment bona fides. Like Trump, they protected their own.

Gor, Scavino and Harp did not respond to requests for comment.

Two months after Gor’s August nomination, Ingrassia was scheduled to appear before the homeland security panel for a Senate confirmation hearing that was supposed to take place on a Thursday. He was in a “murder board” prep session on the preceding Monday afternoon to prepare for the expected avalanche of questions about his background and controversies, according to four administration officials.

But that same afternoon, POLITICO published its article on his inflammatory texts. The reporting revealed that on a January 2024 text chain with Republican operatives and influencers, Ingrassia said the MLK Jr. holiday should be “tossed in the seventh circle of hell” and that Juneteenth and Kwanza “should also be canceled,” according to the chat. Paltzik, Ingrassia’s lawyer, said at the time that even if they were authentic, they were meant to be self-deprecating and satirical.

The reaction was swift. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters he hoped the White House would withdraw the nomination and that Ingrassia couldn’t pass.

Hours later, Ingrassia posted on X that he was withdrawing his nomination “because unfortunately I do not have enough Republican votes at this time.” He said he was grateful for the “overwhelming support” he received during the process “and will continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again!”

Even people close to the White House with knowledge of how staffers felt about Ingrassia said the revelations of the text messages were not a surprise given his association to extremists like Tate and white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

But since nominations are ultimately chosen by Trump, West Wing staffers back candidates until it becomes evident there are simply not enough votes to confirm them, according to two people who were involved in the process.

Some White House staffers were ultimately “relieved” that he withdrew his nomination, said the first person close to the administration.

“The writing was on the wall early on, and I think the recent changes at [the White House Presidential Personnel Office] allow this nomination to finally die,” the first person added, noting that there was “the onslaught of accusations and many people [questioned] his qualifications to begin with” when Trump tapped him.

Even if staffers aren’t fully on board with everyone Trump chooses, the first person said, the feeling is “let’s have the process work itself out” and “be loyal to the pick but be realistic and move on when needed.”

“Not sure anyone is like heartbroken,” the second person added. “It was never expected that it would go through, at least I never did.”

One reason he has kept a job is because Trump rewards his personal champions.

“Paul’s been a steadfast supporter of President Trump and a leader in the America First movement,” said Caroline Wren, a Republican strategist who served as a liaison between the Trump White House and participants in the Jan. 6 rally preceding the Capitol riot.

More trouble ahead?

Already there are questions about Ingrassia’s credentials at GSA, where he quickly moved from deputy general counsel to acting general counsel in a few weeks. An announcement about his elevation to a position that oversees more than 100 attorneys cites his key role in swiftly filling the DOJ and DHS with trusted political appointees.

“What are we? A halfway house for bigots who can’t find jobs anywhere else in this administration?” a GSA official said. Ingrassia’s predecessor at GSA, Russell “Rusty” McGranahan, had a three-decade career at top firms, including BlackRock and White & Case. He recently became a senior adviser to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“Rusty was well qualified and served the administration well. I just want the government to be staffed with experienced people who are taken seriously,” the official added.

Another person familiar with the internal workings of GSA said that Ingrassia “basically won’t be given anything meaningful because [agency] leadership doesn’t really want him.”

“I don’t know what he is or is not, but no one cares for him,” the person added.

Earlier this month, six Senate Democrats sent a letter to the White House and the GSA calling Ingrassia’s continued employment in the federal government “unacceptable,” citing POLITICO’s reporting.

“The Democrats clearly understand that Paul is a very intelligent, strong supporter of President Trump, which is why they want him out,” Ingrassia’s mother said.

Copenhaver, the GSA spokesperson, said that Ingrassia has a bright future at the agency.

“Paul Ingrassia is a well-regarded attorney who has provided outstanding service to President Trump and will continue to do so as GSA’s acting general counsel,” Copenhaver said. “The GSA has complete confidence in his ability to further both its mission and the president’s priorities.”