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Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters Monday that the White House should pull back President Trump’s nomination of Paul Ingrassia to head the Office of Special Counsel after Republican senators said they would not vote for him.
Ingrassia’s nomination raised concerns among Republican members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Monday after Politico reported that he told a group of Republican associates that Martin Luther King Jr. Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and said he has a “Nazi streak.”
Thune told reporters Monday that the White House should consider withdrawing Ingrassia’s nomination.
“He’s not going to pass,” Thune said.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee, where Republicans hold an 8-to-7-seat majority, is scheduled to hold a hearing on Ingrassia on Thursday.
Already two Republican members of the committee have signaled their opposition.
“I don’t plan on voting for him,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a member of the Homeland Security panel, told NBC News.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), another member of the Homeland Security panel, told a reporter for Huffington Post that the White House should pull Ingrassia’s nomination.
“I hope that happens,” he said, adding that he would not support the nominee.
The Republican backlash to Ingrassia came in reaction to reporting that he made racist comments in a text chat with a group of Republican operatives.
In January of 2024, Ingrassia called MLK Jr. the “1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs,” Politico reported. He also used a disparaging term for Black people by arguing that Black History month, Juneteenth and Kwanzaa need to be “eviscerated.”
Edward Andrew Paltzik, a lawyer for Ingrassia, told Politico that his client is “the furthest thing from a Nazi,” in a statement confirmed to The Hill. Paltzik did not confirm the authenticity of the message but still suggested they were made lightheartedly.
Every Democrat on the Homeland Security panel is expected to vote against Ingrassia, which means that if Scott and Johnson oppose the nominee, he wouldn’t have the votes to get out of committee. Even if he did, he would likely not have the votes to win final confirmation on the Senate floor.
