Trump nominates former podcast host with history of inflammatory comments for top ethics job
President Donald Trump has nominated Paul Ingrassia, a former podcast host with a long history of inflammatory remarks, to head the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
'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 said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social announcing the nomination Thursday night.
Ingrassia is a far-right former podcaster and commentator with a lengthy list of incendiary comments. He has called for Jan. 6 to be declared a national holiday to honor the 'peaceful protest against a great injustice affecting our electoral system' and dismissed the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel as a ' psyop.'
He has worked for and praised 'manosphere' influencer Andrew Tate, who's facing rape and human trafficking charges, calling him an 'extraordinary human being.' He has referred to Tate as 'a dissident of authoritarianism' — a title he has said applies as well to white nationalist Nick Fuentes, the rapper Ye and Trump.
He has also called for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to be jailed, and referred to former Vice President Mike Pence as an 'FBI asset.'
Ingrassia graduated from Cornell Law in 2022, joined conservative think tank The Claremont Institute later that year, became a leader in the New York Young Republican Club, and then went on to be a frequent presence at Trump rallies and Mar-a-Lago in 2023 and 2024.
He's currently working as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security and was formerly the administration's liaison to the Justice Department, where he'd been seen walking the halls, touting the president's agenda and telling people he was acting as the 'eyes and ears' of the White House.
His post at the Office of Special Counsel will require Senate confirmation.
The OSC is an independent federal investigative and prosecuting agency, tasked with shielding federal employees from prohibited personnel practices, including retaliation for whistleblowing.
The agency head is confirmed to a five-year term, but Trump fired then-OSC head Hampton Dellinger earlier this year. Dellinger, a Biden nominee who was confirmed to the post last year, fought his dismissal in court but eventually dropped the suit.
Ingrassia thanked Trump for nominating him in a post on X.
'As Special Counsel, my team and I will make every effort to restore competence and integrity to the Executive Branch — with priority on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal workforce and revitalize the Rule of Law and Fairness in Hatch Act enforcement,' he wrote.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Wild reason street preacher is told by cops to move on after walking around the Sydney Opera House: 'Are you going to arrest me?'
Footage has captured the moment police confronted a street preacher for holding a sign with a Bible verse on it outside the Sydney Opera House. Local evangelist Mike McCarthy, 72, shared video of five security guards and two NSW Police officers confronted him on Saturday. The 72-year-old was walking around outside the Opera House with a handheld sign. 'Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. There is no other way to the father but by me. John 14:6,' it read. In the 12-minute clip, shared to his YouTube channel 'Mike with a mic', police urged Mr McCarthy to move away from the area as he was violating a set of bylaws. '[Security] have given you just a simple request to leave the sign over there. They do have bylaws here, governing this area,' one officer said. 'You've refused to comply with them and you've also failed to stop to speak with the security guard. 'Now since then, they've asked you multiple times, and as I understand, because I have dealt with him in the past, they've tried to be reasonable with you.' Mr McCarthy fired back and asked the officer to explain what he has done wrong and which laws he had violated. 'No, you're going to have to tell me what I'm doing wrong or I'm not going anywhere,' he said. 'This is Australia. The Constitution of Australia says I can preach religion anywhere within Australia. 'That's all I'm doing, and I'm not even doing that. I'm just walking around, looking at that.' The officer informed Mr McCarthy he was violating the bylaws governing the Opera House's premises. The bylaw prohibits a person from distributing or displaying 'by oral, visual written, electronic or other means, an advertisement, sign, bill, poster or other promotional material'. 'I'm not interested in bylaws. I'm interested in being free,' Mr McCarthy said. 'What are you going to do, are you going to arrest me?' The officer responded: 'I don't want to. I'm just asking you to leave.' Mr McCarthy replied: 'On principle I'm not going to leave, because I'm an Australian citizen. If I can't walk anywhere in Australia with this sign, there is a problem.' The confrontation ended peacefully after Mr McCarthy walked away with his sign to Circular Quay. NSW Police said no move on direction was issued, however, Mr McCarthy told 2BG host Ben Fordham on Monday that it was 'threatened'. 'I wasn't trying to be difficult, I was just sticking up for my rights and I believe we all should,' he said. The Christian preacher cited the Australian Constitution section 116 outlining the freedom of religion and stipulates that the Commonwealth is prohibited from making laws which prohibit the free exercise of religion. Mr McCarthy explained he did not agree with the bylaws, as section 109 of the constitution stipulates federal law prevails when a conflict arises between federal and state government laws. He told Fordham he was not shocked that security had called the police as it 'happens to us frequently'. 'I was hassled about walking on state-owned land, which I believe it is, for just carrying a sign,' Mr McCarthy said. 'Well, a 72-year-old guy with a sign has got to be a clear and present danger, so we got to shut him down. It's just ridiculous. 'I walk around with this sign everyday. We go everyday out on the street and preach the word of God. We pray with people. That's all we do. 'I took it on principle. I'm not just going to stop. I believe I have a right to do this. I'm not contravening any law that I can see. I'm not stirring up people, I'm not creating havoc, I have no loud speaker. I just had a sign in my hand.' Social media users backed Mr McCarthy, with many questioning why police had stopped him and not hundreds of anti-Israeli protesters in 2023. Protesters, many carrying signs, gathered outside the Opera House when it was going to be lit-up in support of Israel following the Hamas attack in October. 'This man has every right to display his sign and is covered by his and everyone's right to religious expression and freedoms and when you impinge on his rights you are the one breaking the law,' one wrote. A second chimed in: 'What happened to freedom of expression?
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Stan Grant launches an explosive attack on the ABC
Stan Grant has revealed his deep 'sadness' over how the ABC failed in its 'duty of care' to him when he and his family were the target of relentless racist abuse and death threats. The veteran broadcaster and journalist also shared his thoughts on the failure of the Voice referendum, the future of treaties in Australia and the recent boing of the Welcome to Country ceremony at the Melbourne ANZAC Day dawn service in a wide-ranging and nuanced interview with TVNZ's Jack Tame. Grant, 61, quit his role as host of the ABC's Q+A in May 2023 after being subjected to 'relentless racial filth'. In a parting shot, he accused the ABC of 'institutional failure' over how he was treated when he was being bombarded with abuse during the Voice referendum. 'I became a target, my family became a target and the level of abuse just grew louder and louder and louder,' he said. 'Being misrepresented, hateful comments made to me, my wife, my children, my parents. And death threats against us. And a person arrested and charged. 'And throughout it all, I have to say with some sadness, a failure on the part of my employer to handle that and to be able to show proper duty of care to someone in my position who was exposed in ways that I couldn't control.' Grant said his decision to quit was to protect his family and his own sanity. But he insisted he held no one at the ABC personally responsible. 'I didn't feel protected and supported as I should have done with my employer. I don't necessarily blame them,' he added. 'I think they were swimming in waters that were far too deep for them.' After leaving the ABC, Grant said he retreated into Yindyamarra, an Aboriginal philosophy encompassing respect and sitting in silence as a way of trying to understand others and the world around you. The period of deep contemplation allowed him to change how he viewed the failure of the Voice referendum. 'There was something existential about this vote for us as Aboriginal people,' he said. 'It wasn't just a constitutional amendment, it felt like a vote on us. Inevitably, it does. 'We live in a country where we are three percent of the population. We are the most disadvantaged people, we are the most impoverished, we are the most imprisoned. 'We come out of very hard history. And that's almost unknowable to many Australians because Australia is a postcard, and it's beautiful, and it's rich and it's successful, and it's multicultural and it's peaceful. And they're phenomenal achievements.' He said he now saw the Voice as a a 'political failure, rather than a moral failure'. Grant also praised New Zealand for its approach to reconciliation with the Maori people. 'It's interesting being in New Zealand and the ease people move in out of the shared space. 'You know that you are in a place that is founded on something that is very vertical, very deep and very shared - contested, yes and not evenly distributed - and I think the treaty goes a long way to that,' he said. He was referencing the Treaty of Waitangi, the foundational document in New Zealand's history which established a relationship between the Maori and the British Crown. 'Australia doesn't have that. We don't have treaties. We don't have a constitutional recognition,' Grant said. 'There is still the overhang of Terra Nullius (meaning 'nobody's land' in Latin) that it was claimed because we simply weren't there in a legal sense. They are existential wounds that we have no dealt with.' Grant said that he was faced with a choice between having to 'imagine the Australia that I want or live in the Australia that I have'. 'To imagine a treaty, the likes of which you have here (in New Zealand), in the Australian context is just not possible. We are not made that way.' 'I navigate this now as more of a question of The Voice being a political failure rather than a moral failure.' Grant was also asked about the ugly scenes during the ANZAC Day dawn service in Melbourne where the air of reverence was broken during Bunurong elder Mark Brown's Welcome to Country, when loud heckles and boos threatened to drown him out. 'The wonderful thing about that is that the people who applauded the welcome and showed respect, far outweighed the small number of neo-Nazis, which is what they are, who had booed that Welcome,' Grant said. He said his immediate, gut reaction was to think 'Australia hates us' but his considered response allowed him to realise those who opposed the booing far outweighed the minority who were doing it. But he criticised Peter Dutton for trying to score political points by seizing on the national discussion to say he thought Welcome to Country ceremonies were sometimes 'overdone'. He accused the former Opposition Leader of a 'moral failure'. To take that and land that in the midst of a culture war where once again Aboriginal people were a political football and it backfired.' He added: 'The conservative side of politics sought to inflict a moral injury out of what was a very hateful act from a very small number of people.' Grant went further, claiming that opposition and criticism of Welcome to Country ceremonies was actually a 'failure of Conservatism'. 'What deeper conservative tradition could there be than a Welcome to Country that is thousands of years old? That is joined with an ANZAC service that is a solemn acknowledgment of sacrifice for the greater good,' he said. 'And to put those two beautiful traditions together creates a sacred space that we can all share in and any decent conservatism would seek to preserve that as a common good.' Grant also turned his sights on the media in general, which he claims is responsible for 'generating conflict and polarising debate'. 'I really had to confront what I was doing and what I saw, I thought, in the complicity of media in the conflicts of our age,' he said of his decision to quit the public broadcaster. 'I started to see that the media in many ways was the poison in the bloodstream of our society.' Since he quit the ABC two years ago, Grant has written a book about the failure of the Voice called Murriyang: Song of Time and has served as the Vice Chancellor's Chair of Australian-Indigenous Belonging at Charles Sturt University.
Reuters
4 hours ago
- Reuters
Russia and Ukraine to talk about peace but are still far apart
ISTANBUL, June 2 (Reuters) - Russian and Ukrainian officials are due to sit down on Monday in the Turkish city of Istanbul for their second round of direct peace talks since 2022, but the two sides are still far apart on how to end the war and the fighting is stepping up. U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded Russia and Ukraine make peace, but so far they have not and the White House has repeatedly warned the United States will "walk away" from the war if the two sides are too stubborn to reach a peace deal. The first round of talks on May 16 yielded the biggest prisoner swap of the war but no sign of peace - or even a ceasefire as both sides merely set out their own opening negotiating positions. After keeping the world guessing on whether Ukraine would even turn up for the second round, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Defence Minister Rustem Umerov would meet with Russian officials in Istanbul. The Russian delegation will be headed by Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky, who after the first round invoked French general and statesman Napoleon Bonaparte to assert that war and negotiations should always be conducted at the same time. On Sunday, Ukraine launched one of its most ambitious attacks of the war, targeting Russian nuclear-capable long-range bombers in Siberia and other military bases, while the Kremlin launched 472 drones at Ukraine, Ukraine's air force said, the highest nightly total of the war. The idea of direct talks was first proposed by President Vladimir Putin after Ukraine and European powers demanded that he agree to a ceasefire which the Kremlin dismissed. Putin said Russia would draft a memorandum setting out the broad contours of a possible peace accord and only then discuss a ceasefire. Kyiv said over the weekend it was still waiting for draft memorandum from the Russian side. Medinsky, the lead Kremlin negotiator, said on Sunday that Moscow had received a Ukraine's draft memorandum and told Russia's RIA news agency the Kremlin would react to it on Monday. According to Trump envoy Keith Kellogg, the two sides will in Turkey present their respective documents outlining their ideas for peace terms, though it is clear that after three years of war Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart. Kellogg has indicated that the U.S. will be involved in the talks and that even representatives from Britain, France and Germany will be too, though it was not clear at what level the United States would be represented. Ukraine's delegation will also include its deputy foreign minister, as well as several military and intelligence officials, according to an executive order by Zelenskiy on Sunday. In June last year, Putin set out his opening terms for an immediate end to the war: Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia. Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul will present to the Russian side a proposed roadmap for reaching a lasting peace settlement, according to a copy of the document seen by Reuters. According to the document, there will be no restrictions on Ukraine's military strength after a peace deal is struck, no international recognition of Russian sovereignty over parts of Ukraine taken by Moscow's forces, and reparations for Ukraine. The document also stated that the current location of the front line will be the starting point for negotiations about territory. Russia currently controls a little under one fifth of Ukraine, or about 113,100 square km, about the same size as the U.S. state of Ohio. Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops to invade Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops. The United States says over 1.2 million people have been killed and injured in the war since 2022. Trump has called Putin "crazy" and berated Zelenskiy in public in the Oval Office, but the U.S. president has also said that he thinks peace is achievable and that if Putin delays then he could impose tough sanctions on Russia.
