Trump nominee to lead whistleblower office withdraws after racist texts – US politics live | Trump administration
Paul Ingrassia, Trump nominee to lead ethics office, withdraws after racist texts
Paul Ingrassia, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead a government ethics office, just announced on social media that he is withdrawing from consideration, after the publication of racist text messages caused Republican senators to say they would not vote to confirm him.
“I will be withdrawing myself from Thursday’s HSGAC hearing to lead the Office of Special Counsel because unfortunately I do not have enough Republican votes at this time,” Ingrassia wrote on X, using the acronym for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee. “I appreciate the overwhelming support that I have received throughout this process and will continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again!”
Ingrassia currently serves as Trump’s White House liaison for the department of homeland security, where a colleague accused him of sexual harassment earlier this year. Ingrassia denies wrongdoing.
According to texts reviewed by Politico, Ingrassia, a lawyer and former pro-Trump blogger, wrote last year that Martin Luther King Jr “was the 1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs”.
He also used a slur for Black people in a text arguing that all Black holidays should be “eviscerated” and admitted “I do have a Nazi streak in me.”
The Office of Special Counsel, the agency Trump picked Ingrassia to lead, investigates discrimination complaints and other claims of wrongdoing by federal employees, and enforces the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from engaging in certain partisan political activities, and has been widely flouted by the Trump administration.
Support from Republican senators for Ingrassia’s confirmation hemorrhaged over the past 24 hours, with Ron Johnson and Rick Scott saying on Monday that they would not vote for him over the texts.
In addition to attack on Black Americans, Ingrassia reportedly also wrote in 2024: “Never trust a chinaman or Indian”.
On Tuesday, Trump was joined by prominent Indian Americans, including his FBI director, Kash Patel, to celebrate Diwali in the Oval Office.
Key events
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Before withdrawing, Ingrassia claimed racist texts might have been ‘manipulated with AI’ – report
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Ingrassia joins long list of Trump nominees to be withdrawn before confirmation vote
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Paul Ingrassia, Trump nominee to lead ethics office, withdraws after racist texts
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Trump claims, falsely, that Portland ‘was on fire over the weekend’
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At White House Diwali celebration, Trump repeats contested claim he brokered India-Pakistan ceasefire
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Trump claims US government agencies ‘owe me a lot of money’ in compensation for indictments
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Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner ‘knows damn well’ what his Nazi tattoo means, former political director says
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Johnson says that discharge petition will go to House floor once Grijalva is sworn in
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Top Senate Republican says White House will have ‘something to say’ about Ingrassia nomination
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Trump demands justice department pay him $230m in compensation for federal investigations into him – report
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Former US national security officials urge Congress to examine ‘Interagency Weaponization Working Group’
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Interim Summary
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Senate majority leader Thune tells Democrats to ‘get wise’
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Trump chides senator Rand Paul, without mentioning his name
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Trump hosts GOP senators for Rose Garden lunch
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White House says no plans for Trump-Putin meeting in the immediate future
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Vance says that future governance of Gaza should be left to Palestinians and Israelis
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Vance refuses to put “explicit deadline” for Hamas to comply with disarmament
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‘There’s almost this desire to root for failure’: JD Vance begins press conference in Israel
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Johnson says violence on the left is ‘more prevalent’ when asked about arrest of pardoned Capitol rioter
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Johnson says lawmakers are working on ‘maximum transparency’ in Epstein investigation
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Trump says ‘end to Hamas’ will be ‘fast, furious and brutal’ if fighting continues
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JD Vance meets with top envoys in Israel
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Republican senators indicate they won’t confirm Paul Ingrassia to special counsel role
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CIA playing ‘most important part’ in US strikes in the Caribbean, sources say
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US appeals court could reconsider ruling in Trump’s favor on Portland troop deployment
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Trump hosts GOP senators in Rose Garden amid White House construction work
Before withdrawing, Ingrassia claimed racist texts might have been ‘manipulated with AI’ – report
Burgess Everett of Semafor reports that Paul Ingrassia, Donald Trump’s pick to lead a government ethics office, made a last-ditch effort to convince Republican senators to support his confirmation by suggesting in an email that a slew of racist texts revealed by Politico on Monday might have been fake.
“I have no recollection of these alleged chat leaks, and do not concede their authenticity,” Ingrassia wrote in an email obtained by Everett. “They could well be outright falsehoods, doctored, or manipulated with AI, or at the very least, lack critical context.”
He did not explain in what context text messages attributed to him suggesting that the Martin Luther King Jr holiday “should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs”, or that one should “Never trust a chinaman or Indian” might be deemed appropriate.
Ingrassia joins long list of Trump nominees to be withdrawn before confirmation vote
Paul Ingrassia, who withdrew from consideration to lead a government ethics office on Tuesday, after a string of his racist texts were revealed, is just the latest of dozens of Donald Trump’s picks for federal office to drop out before a confirmation vote.
The first choice to serve attorney general, Matt Gaetz, withdrew over allegations that the former Florida congressman had paid to have sex with a minor. He is now hosting a show on One America News, a far-right cable news channel.
Trump withdrew his pick to be US attorney in Washington DC, Ed Martin, after it became clear that his defense of January 6 rioters was too much for at least one Republican senator, Thom Tillis.
Trump also pulled the nomination of EJ Antoni, a conservative thinktank economist with a disturbing and partisan social media history, to replace the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics he fired for reporting evidence about the job market that the president disliked.
According to a count by the politics newsletter writer Gabe Fleisher, 49 of Trump’s nominees have failed to even make it to a confirmation vote this year, a record-setting total.
Other notable Trump picks to be withdrawn include: Jared Isaacman, as Nasa administrator; Janette Nesheiwat, as surgeon general; Elise Stefanik, as UN ambassador; David Weldon, as CDC director; Erik Siebert, as US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia.
Paul Ingrassia, Trump nominee to lead ethics office, withdraws after racist texts
Paul Ingrassia, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead a government ethics office, just announced on social media that he is withdrawing from consideration, after the publication of racist text messages caused Republican senators to say they would not vote to confirm him.
“I will be withdrawing myself from Thursday’s HSGAC hearing to lead the Office of Special Counsel because unfortunately I do not have enough Republican votes at this time,” Ingrassia wrote on X, using the acronym for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee. “I appreciate the overwhelming support that I have received throughout this process and will continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again!”
Ingrassia currently serves as Trump’s White House liaison for the department of homeland security, where a colleague accused him of sexual harassment earlier this year. Ingrassia denies wrongdoing.
According to texts reviewed by Politico, Ingrassia, a lawyer and former pro-Trump blogger, wrote last year that Martin Luther King Jr “was the 1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs”.
He also used a slur for Black people in a text arguing that all Black holidays should be “eviscerated” and admitted “I do have a Nazi streak in me.”
The Office of Special Counsel, the agency Trump picked Ingrassia to lead, investigates discrimination complaints and other claims of wrongdoing by federal employees, and enforces the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from engaging in certain partisan political activities, and has been widely flouted by the Trump administration.
Support from Republican senators for Ingrassia’s confirmation hemorrhaged over the past 24 hours, with Ron Johnson and Rick Scott saying on Monday that they would not vote for him over the texts.
In addition to attack on Black Americans, Ingrassia reportedly also wrote in 2024: “Never trust a chinaman or Indian”.
On Tuesday, Trump was joined by prominent Indian Americans, including his FBI director, Kash Patel, to celebrate Diwali in the Oval Office.
Rachel Leingang
Arizona’s attorney general is suing the House speaker, Mike Johnson, over his refusal to swear in Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat who won a congressional special election in September.
Grijalva was elected on 23 September in the southern Arizona district that her father, Raúl Grijalva, held until his death earlier this year.
Kris Mayes, the Democratic attorney general in Arizona, had promised to sue if Johnson would not let Grijalva get started on her work. She sent a letter to Johnson on 14 October demanding he schedule a swearing-in within two days, which did not happen.
“By blocking Adelita Grijalva from taking her rightful oath of office, [Johnson] is subjecting Arizona’s seventh Congressional district to taxation without representation. I will not allow Arizonans to be silenced or treated as second-class citizens in their own democracy,” Mayes said in a press release announcing the lawsuit.
Trump claims, falsely, that Portland ‘was on fire over the weekend’
Speaking in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Donald Trump repeated his wildly false claim that the city of Portland, Oregon is beset by fires started by protesters.
The president was asked to comment on a federal appeals court ruling on Monday, in which a three-judge panel lifted a lower court’s order that blocked his deployment of national guard troops to Portland, to quell a persistent but small protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) office.
“That was the decision, that I can send the national guard if I see problems,” Trump replied. “I looked at Portland over the weekend. The place is burning down, just burning down.”
“Maybe that influenced the court,” the president added, in apparent reference to an incident on Saturday evening, in which federal officers opened fire with chemical agents on a crowd of peaceful protesters who gathered outside the Ice office in an outlying Portland neighborhood, after a much larger, festive anti-Trump, No Kings protest in the city’s downtown.
In fact, the only member of the three-judge panel who lives in Portland, Susan Graber, dissented very strenuously from the decision by two her colleagues, who were both nominated by Trump, that national guard troops were needed in the city.
“You look at a place like Portland, it’s ridiculous when they say that there’s no problem,” Trump added. “The place was, it was on fire over the weekend.”
Video from Oregon Public Broadcasting showed the actual scene outside the Ice facility in Portland’s South Waterfront district on Saturday, as reporters noted that federal officers used chemical munitions to disperse a protest by about 500 people that looked more like a street party than a riot.
At White House Diwali celebration, Trump repeats contested claim he brokered India-Pakistan ceasefire
During the White House celebration of Diwali, Donald Trump repeated a disputed claim that he brokered a ceasefire this year between India and Pakistan by threatening to impose tariffs if the conflict continued.
“Let me also extend our warmest wishes to the people of India. I just spoke to your prime minister today. We had a great conversation. We talk about trade, we talk about a lot of things, but mostly the world of trade, he’s very interested in that,” Trump said.
“Although we did talk a little while ago about, ‘let’s have no wars with Pakistan,’ and I think the fact that trade was involved, I was able to talk him out of that,” Trump added.
Trump’s claim that he brokered the India-Pakistan ceasefire in May reportedly infuriated the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, who insists that it was settled directly between the two nations, and caused a rift between Trump and Modi.
The fact that Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, gave Trump credit and nominated the US president for the Nobel Peace Prize, is unlikely to have improved relations between Modi and Trump.
In his remarks, Trump repeatedly suggested that he had used tariffs to bring peace around the globe, perhaps previewing the case his administration will make next month at the supreme court when it asks the court to overturn lower court rulings that most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal.
Trump claims US government agencies ‘owe me a lot of money’ in compensation for indictments
Speaking in the Oval Office on Tuesday, at a celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, Donald Trump was asked about a report that he is demanding hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for the thwarted legal cases against him after his first term.
While Trump initially suggested that he was unaware of the report, he said, “I guess they probably owe me a lot of money for that.”
He added that he would donate any money paid to him by the government to charity or to pay for public works, like the construction of a massive ballroom at the White House.
“We have numerous cases, having to do with the fraud of the election, the 2020 election” Trump added. “Because of everything we found out, I guess they owe me a lot of money.”
“With the country, it’s interesting because I’m the one that makes the decision and that decision would have to go across my desk and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself,” the president said. “But I was damaged very greatly and any money I would get, I would give to charity.”
He then suggested that both Kash Patel, the FBI director, and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, “are working on” investigations of the 2020 election he falsely claims was stolen from him.
“What they did, they rigged the election,” Trump said later, suggesting that the compensation he expects is not simply to pay his legal fees but a sort of compensation for not being named the winner of the 2020 election he lost.
The New York Times reported earlier on Tuesday that Trump had filed two claims demanding that the justice department he now controls pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, including the FBI and special counsel investigation into the Russian government’s hack and leak scheme to boost his chances of winning the 2016 election, and the 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago, when federal investigators found a huge trove of classified documents he illegally retained after leaving office.
Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner ‘knows damn well’ what his Nazi tattoo means, former political director says
Graham Platner, the Maine oysterman and former US marine campaigning to be the Democrat’s candidate in next year’s US Senate race, “has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest” and “knows damn well what it means,” according to one of his close aides who resigned last week.
Platner tried to get ahead of the revelation that he has a skull and crossbones tattoo on his chest known as Totenkopf, a symbol used by the Nazi SS, by releasing video of himself shirtless to Pod Save America, and offering an explanation to the podcast run by former Obama communications staffers.
In the interview, Platner claimed that he was unaware of the Nazi link when he got the tattoo while on leave in the Croatian city of Split during his time in the marines.
Genevieve McDonald, Platner’s former political director, disputed that in a Facebook post shared by Alex Seitz-Wald, the editor of Maine’s Midcoast Villager newspaper.
“Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest,” McDonald wrote. “He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff. Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.”
“His campaign released it themselves to some podcast bros,” she added, “along with a video of him shirtless and drunk at a wedding to try to get ahead of it.”
Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, told Igor Bobic of HuffPost on Tuesday that he continues to support Platner. “There’s a young man who served his country in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he went through some really difficult experiences seeing friends of his killed or whatever, and in spite of all of that he had the courage to run”, Sanders said.
“I personally think he is an excellent candidate. I’m going to support him, and I look forward to him becoming the next senator in the state of Maine”, he added.
Johnson says that discharge petition will go to House floor once Grijalva is sworn in
Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill today, House speaker Mike Johnson said a vote to release the full tranche of Epstein files will hit the House floor, after representative-elect Adelita Grijalva is sworn in.
Grijalva will be the 218th signature needed on a discharge petition that would force a vote in the House. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have accused Johnson of delaying the formal swearing in of the Arizona representative and staving off a vote.
“If you get the signatures, it goes to a vote,” Johnson said today. However, at a press conference earlier he said the bipartisan effort would be redundant as the House oversight committee continues its investigation into the handling of the Epstein case.
Democratic congressman Ro Khanna said that Johnson saying he would not block the vote is ultimately “a big deal”.
“I appreciate Speaker Johnson making it clear we will get a vote on Rep. Thomas Massie and my bill to release the Epstein files. The advocacy of the survivors is working. Now let’s get Adelita Grijalva sworn in and Congress back to work,” Khanna added in a statement.
In his gaggle, Thune noted that the next vote in the Senate, on the House-passed stopgap funding bill to reopen the government, will take place tomorrow. He said he’s confident that he’ll get enough Democrats on board to cross the 60-vote threshold.
Top Senate Republican says White House will have ‘something to say’ about Ingrassia nomination
Addressing reporters after lunch in the Rose Garden, Senate majority leader John Thune took a question about the White House’s updated stance on Paul Ingrassia’s nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which now remains in question after Politico reported text messages in which Ingrassia allegedly described himself as having “a Nazi streak” and suggested Martin Luther King Jr Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell”.
“They’ll have something official to say about that. But you know what we’ve said,” Thune said, after he told reporters on Monday that Ingrassia’s nomination is “not going to pass”.
Trump demands justice department pay him $230m in compensation for federal investigations into him – report
The New York Times reports that the president is demanding the justice department pay him about $230m in compensation for the federal investigations into him. They cite anonymous sources familiar with the matter.
The sources tell the Times that Trump is seeking damages for “a number of purported violations of his rights”, including the FBI and special counsel investigation into Russian election tampering and possible connections to the 2016 Trump campaign.
They add that the president has made these complaints through and administrative claims process, that have yet to be made public. Another complaint allegedly says that the FBI violated Trump’s rights when his Mar-a-Lago estate was searched in 2022 for classified documents.
The report has raised significant concerns from legal experts about the ethics of these unprecedented demands – which would essentially require a department, that the president now oversees, to pay him out for their work investigating him.
Gloria Oladipo
Attorneys for Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and legal US resident who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) following his pro-Palestinian activism, have filed appeals to prevent the Trump administration from detaining him again.
Lawyers representing Khalil argued to the federal third circuit court of appeals in Philadelphia that his release from Ice detention by a lower court should be affirmed and that the US government should be barred from detaining or deporting Khalil in the future.
“The Trump administration is still trying to bring me back to detention and block the federal court in New Jersey from reviewing my case, the same court that ordered my release and ruled that their actions against me were unlawful,” said Khalil of his case in a press release. “Their intention couldn’t be more clear: they want to make an example of me to intimidate those speaking out for Palestine across the country.”
Khalil was released from Ice detention in June after spending more than 100 days in the LaSalle detention center, an immigration jail in Jena, Louisiana. Michael E Farbiarz, a US district judge in New Jersey, ordered Khalil’s release and blocked the Trump administration from deporting him for foreign policy reasons.
But in September, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that Khalil should be deported to Syria or Algeria for not reporting certain information on his green card application.
The ruling from the judge, Jamee Comans, came amid a previous order from Farbiarz which bars Khalil’s deportation as the federal case proceeds in New Jersey. Khalil’s lawyers said they planned to appeal the latest deportation order and that Farbiarz’s mandates prevent Khalil’s removal.
Former US national security officials urge Congress to examine ‘Interagency Weaponization Working Group’
A group consisting of several hundred former US national security officials have issued a letter to Congress, urging its leaders to examine the existence of an “Interagency Weaponization Working Group.”
The Steady State, a group of over former officials committed to their oath to “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” wrote the letter Tuesday in response to reports of the IWWG, which is “apparently tasked with pursuing retributive actions against individuals perceived as political opponents of the president.”
Citing a recent Reuters investigation, the letter said:
If accurate, these reports describe a profound and dangerous subversion of the apolitical foundation of the Intelligence Community… The activities described in the Reuters report echo the worst examples of intelligence politicization and misuse of ‘security services’ in our history, and would represent a direct violation of the statutory and ethical boundaries designed to separate intelligence functions from domestic political operations.
The letter went on to call leaders from the Senate and House intelligence, judiciary and armed services committees to:
1. Hold immediate closed hearings with the Director of National Intelligence, the Attorney General, and relevant agency heads to determine the existence, authority, and scope of any such interagency group;
2. Request all documents, communications, and membership lists related to the IWWG and similar “weaponization” initiatives, including taskings and technical-collection authorizations;
3. Assess potential violations of the National Security Act, Executive Order 12333, and statutory prohibitions on domestic intelligence activities; and
4. Affirm publicly—in a bipartisan statement—that the Intelligence Community must never be employed for political or personal retribution.
Interim Summary
It is nearly 2pm ET in Washington DC. Here’s a look at where things currently stand across US politics:
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There are no plans for Donald Trump to meet with Vladmir Putin “in the immediate future”, a White House official told the Guardian. The official added that the recent call between secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was “productive”, and therefore an additional-in-person meeting between the envoys is “not necessary”.
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Hosting several Republican lawmakers at the White House for lunch, Trump spent most of his opening remarks heralding the success of his sweeping tariffs. “We’re a wealthy nation again, and we’re a nation that can be secure. We’re a nation that can start paying down our debt, and with tariffs, we’re the wealthiest nation ever in the history of the world,” he said.
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Earlier today, Trump said on Truth Social that several Middle East allies told him they would “welcome the opportunity” at Trump’s request to go into Gaza “with a heavy force” and “straighten our Hamas” if they “continue to behave badly”. This comes after the 11-day ceasefire in Gaza was seriously undermined on Sunday when Israel launched waves of deadly airstrikes and said it would cut off aid into the territory “until further notice” after a reported attack by Hamas, which the militant group denied being involved in.
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Meanwhile, JD Vance, who is currently on a visit to Israel, said that he would not “put an explicit deadline” on Hamas to comply with the key points of the Gaze ceasefire deal. “If Hamas doesn’t comply with the deal, very bad things are going to happen,” Vance said, reiterating Donald Trump’s threats earlier today on social media.
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New York state police announced recently that a pardoned rioter at the January 6 insurrection was arrested last weekend for allegedly threatening to kill Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader. House Republican speaker Mike Johnson noted that “anybody who threatens political violence against elected officials or anyone else should be have the full weight and measure of the Department of Justice on their head.”
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Johnson also said that lawmakers on the House oversight committee are “working around the clock” to ensure “maximum transparency” in the ongoing investigation into the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. He added that the committee’s work is “already accomplishing” what the bipartisan discharge petition, which would force a vote on the House floor to release the full tranche of Epstein records, seeks to do achieve.
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Some Republican senators have said they don’t support Paul Ingrassia’s nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel, ahead of his confirmation hearing on Thursday. Politico reported on Monday that Ingrassia told other Republicans he “has a Nazi streak” and said holidays commemorating Black people should be “eviscerated”, in a private group chat.
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The CIA is providing the bulk of the intelligence used to carry out the controversial lethal air strikes by the Trump administration against boats in the Caribbean Sea suspected of carrying drugs from Venezuela, according to three sources familiar with the operations. Experts say the agency’s central role means much of the evidence used to select which alleged smugglers to kill on the open sea will almost certainly remain secret.
Senate majority leader Thune tells Democrats to ‘get wise’
The Senate’s top Republican, John Thune, closed out the lunch in the Rose Garden by urging his colleagues across the aisle to “get wise” and “vote to reopen the government”.
“Everybody here has voted now 11 different times to open up the government, and we are going to keep voting to open up the government, and eventually, the Democrats, hopefully, sooner or later, are going to come around,” Thune said.
Trump is running through what he sees are the greatest hits of his first nine months back at the White House. “We don’t need to pass any more bills. We got everything in that bill,” the president said, referring to his sweeping domestic policy agenda that he signed into law in July.
Here are a few pictures of some of the senators and officials in the Rose Garden today.
