White House point man at Homeland Security shared ‘martial law option' post to keep Trump in office

CNN

26-02-2025

The Trump administration's new point man for dealings with the Department of Homeland Security is a former far-right podcast host and election denier who once shared an article calling for 'martial law' to keep Donald Trump in office following his loss in the 2020 election.
Paul Ingrassia and the Twitter account for a podcast he co-hosted posted the remark and similar sentiments on social media in December 2020 and January 2021, according to a CNN KFile review of deleted and still-active posts by Ingrassia himself and the account of the podcast.
The 29-year-old Ivy League-educated lawyer now serves as the second Trump administration's White House liaison to the DHS, a key role that has historically involved managing the administration's relationship with the department and overseeing the placement of political appointees.
Since assuming the White House role, Ingrassia was present for the release of prisoners convicted of crimes for the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and, according to The New York Times, had an office near Attorney General Pam Bondi while he was briefly at the Justice Department.
CNN reached out to Ingrassia, his podcast's co-host, the White House, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security for comment but did not receive a response.
On Monday, ABC News reported that Ingrassia was pushed out of the Justice Department as liaison following clashes between him and the chief of staff over pushing to hire candidates with 'exceptional loyalty' to the president.
CNN confirmed that Ingrassia is no longer at the Justice Department and his LinkedIn profile now lists him at Homeland Security.
Ingrassia graduated from Cornell Law School in 2022 and during the 2024 Republican presidential primary published a discredited theory that candidate Nikki Haley was not a natural born citizen and not eligible to be president. The claim was later boosted by Trump on Truth Social. Ingrassia later called Haley an 'insufferable bitch,' in a recently deleted January 2024 tweet.
Prior to his role in government, his comments on Twitter (now known as X) and the 'Right on Point' podcast he co-hosted with his sister echoed some of the most extreme election denial rhetoric of the time. The podcast's Twitter account – which Ingrassia linked to episode descriptions, his Twitter, and a Parler account he made in December 2020 – sent tweets in December 2020 calling for 'secession' if court cases meant to keep Trump in office failed and numerous tweets calling to 'support martial law.'
'Time for @realDonaldTrump to declare martial law and secure his re-election! It's the only way,' the podcast's account posted in December 2020 in a since-deleted tweet.
In the days leading up to the Capitol riot, Ingrassia publicly mocked conservatives who opposed violent measures to keep Trump in power.
The podcast account also posted a quote from President John F. Kennedy the night of January 6, 2021, reading, 'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, (will) make violent revolution inevitable.'
In one post from January 2, 2021, Ingrassia called right-wing commentator Seb Gorka 'soft' after Gorka rebuked a post that called for then-Vice President Mike Pence to be arrested and executed by firing squad for not supporting attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Both Ingrassia and the podcast have embraced rhetoric branding fellow Republicans as traitors.
Ingrassia's tweets have likened Pence to Brutus and Judas, saying he belongs in the 'ninth circle of hell.' He has repeatedly called for expelling 'traitors' from the GOP.
The 'Right on Point' podcast's social media similarly demanded purges of so-called 'traitors' from the Republican Party, including then-Attorney General Bill Barr in December 2020, whom the podcast labeled a 'Bush-affiliated neocon of the Washington swamp,' – and whom Ingrassia has also labeled a 'traitor' and disparaged as being part of the Washington, DC, 'swamp.'
Four days after the Gorka tweet, Ingrassia shared a blog post from his podcast that argued for the 'martial law option' to keep Trump in power, urging him to use emergency powers to delay Joe Biden's inauguration. The post claimed Trump had a 'moral imperative' to ensure election security and called for a military-run re-vote in key battleground states where he had challenged the results.
The blog post was signed by the pseudonym Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus - an early Roman Republic statesman whom Ingrassia has referenced publicly in tweets and blog posts.
The blog post also contained other references to ancient Rome, including a picture of a statue of the first Roman emperor Augustus that Ingrassia later shared in a 2023 tweet and images of the assassination of Julius Caesar by Brutus – the latter of whom Ingrassia has publicly compared to former Vice President Mike Pence.
'To that end, a martial law orchestrated revote in at least the four defendant-states in the quashed Texas lawsuit: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin is needed,' the post read.
The blog post also suggested the president 'should use his emergency powers to postpone Inauguration Day' until a special counsel concludes an investigation into election fraud.
This proposal is unconstitutional. The 20th Amendment of the constitution asserts that the new term of each elected president begins at noon on January 20 of the year following the election.
In the weeks after the election, Ingrassia's podcast changed its name on X from 'Right on Point' to 'STOP THE STEAL HQ' and began selling signs for what it said was Trump's legal defense.
Trump repeatedly reposted articles Ingrassia wrote for the far-right conspiracy website Gateway Pundit on his Truth Social page. Ingrassia himself declares in his social media bio that he is 'President Trump's favorite writer.'
CNN's Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this story.