The nominee for US Office of Special Counsel, Paul Ingrassia, told a group of other Republicans in a text chain that the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and that he has a “Nazi streak,” according to a report by Politico.
Ingrassia, who currently works as White House liaison at the US Department of Homeland Security, also called assassinated civil rights leader King the “1960s George Floyd,” referring to the Black man killed by Minneapolis police in 2020, the report says.
Ingrassia’s Senate nomination hearing for the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates federal whistleblower complaints and discrimination claims, is scheduled for Thursday.
A lawyer for Ingrassia, Edward Andrew Paltzik, tells Politico that the messages could have been manipulated or doctored to damage Ingrassia’s confirmation chances. “We do not concede the authenticity of any of these purported messages,” Paltzik says.
Paltzik did not respond to a request for comment, and Reuters was unable to reach Ingrassia directly. Both the White House and DHS did not respond to requests for comment.
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