Trump Nominee Accused of Sexually Harassing a DHS Colleague

The president’s nominee to run the Office of Special Counsel was recently investigated for harassment.

Paul Ingrassia currently serves as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security. Trump tapped him to man the independent agency in June, but one month later, Ingrassia allegedly effectively coerced a lower-ranking female colleague to share a hotel room with him, reported Politico.

Ingrassia’s junior, another Trump appointee, had arrived with Ingrassia and other DHS colleagues at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando in late July. But it was only when the group reached the front desk that she learned she had not been provided a room of her own.

“Eventually the woman discovered that Ingrassia had arranged ahead of time to have her hotel room canceled so she would have to stay with him,” three administration officials told Politico anonymously.

The unnamed woman initially protested the arrangement, but relented to prevent making a scene in front of her colleagues. The two went to their room and slept in separate beds, according to Politico.

But the incident has remained a hot topic amongst DHS staffers ever since.

Ingrassia’s attorneys denied the allegations, and said that no last-minute changes were made to the hotel reservation.

“Mr. Ingrassia has never harassed any coworkers—female or otherwise, sexually or otherwise—in connection with any employment,” Edward Andrew Paltzik wrote in a letter to Politico, acknowledging that the DHS co-workers shared a hotel room but that “no party engaged in inappropriate behavior” on the trip.

The unnamed woman told Politico in a statement that she “never felt uncomfortable” with Ingrassia’s behavior and said she never made a complaint.

“A colleague misjudged the situation and made claims of alleged harassment that are not true,” the woman said. “There was no wrongdoing.”

The woman wasn’t the first to file a complaint. Instead, a career official filed one, with Ingrassia’s female colleague filing her own complaint afterward. The woman later retracted her complaint, which three officials said was out of fear of retaliation.

But in her interview with Politico as well as the legal complaint, the woman underscored that she wanted Ingrassia to change his tone with her and to begin communicating in a more professional manner. Five administration officials told Politico that Ingrassia’s behavior was “affecting her ability to do her job.”

A DHS spokesperson told the publication that its investigation into the incident had been fruitless.

“Career human resources personnel thoroughly looked into every allegation and concern and found no wrongdoing,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Ingrassia was already a controversial pick before news of the investigation became public. Republican senators have raised concerns about the 30-year-old’s lack of experience and his ties to multiple antisemitic extremists. That would include white nationalist Nick Fuentes and self-proclaimed misogynist and proud woman-beater Andrew Tate, whom Ingrassia worked for as a member of Tate’s legal team.

The incident also casts Ingrassia’s nomination for the Office of Special Counsel into doubt, particularly as the agency’s work primarily focuses on sensitive matters, including federal employee whistleblower complaints and discrimination claims.

MAGA prosecutor Lindsey Halligan is already making basic errors in her indictment of New York Attorney General (and Trump target) Letitia James. In an official court filing Thursday, Halligan listed James’s address as “Brooklyn, New Jersey” instead of New York, where Brooklyn is.

This is a pretty glaring mistake that someone trying to prosecute a state attorney general for false statements to a financial institution should not be making. Halligan, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, also brought forth charges last month against former FBI Director James Comey for lying to Congress, after her predecessor refused to. In that indictment, Halligan too made basic errors, like misspelling words and submitting the wrong documents to the judge.

Halligan, previously Trump’s personal lawyer, is a deeply unqualified pawn whose only mission is to head these obviously politicized legal attacks on people Trump doesn’t like. She had literally never prosecuted anyone before Comey, and has most of her experience in insurance cases.

“When you bring a case against the former director of the FBI, you definitely want it to be the maiden voyage of an insurance lawyer,” Last Week Tonight host John Oliver said sarcastically after Halligan indicted Comey. “What she lacks in prosecutorial experience she more than makes up for in random insurance facts and a shitload of undereye concealer.”

Now those same concerns are bubbling up again as Halligan makes an easily avoidable blunder in her newest politically motivated prosecution. All this from the administration obsessed with merit.

Passing over Donald Trump (in spite of his less-than-subtle appeals), the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday gave Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado the Nobel Peace Prize.

The award’s announcement cautioned that democratic backsliding is accelerating globally—a trend to which Trump has made no small contribution.

The Nobel Committee said it was recognizing Machado for “her tireless work promoting democratic rights” in an “authoritarian state.”

“Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace,” the committee stated. “However, we live in a world where democracy is in retreat, where more and more authoritarian regimes are challenging norms and resorting to violence.”

The “same trends” of repression and consolidation of power seen in Venezuela are happening globally, the committee said: “rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarisation.

“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” the committee continued.

In these warnings, it’s hard not to hear echoes of the United States today under Trump—the militarization of American cities, weaponization of government against political opponents, violations of civil liberties, deportation of dissidents, and attacks on the press, academia, and other institutions.

Last month, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a global democracy watchdog, reported that it had flagged twice as many instances of the U.S. government eroding or abolishing “rules, institutions, and norms” that shape American democracy in the first four months of Trump’s second term as in the previous two years. Examples included “efforts to restrict academic freedom, criminalize protest activity, question the legitimacy of certified elections, selectively restrict media access to the executive and circumvent due process norms.”

It’s been three weeks since House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers back to their districts, and Republicans are getting seriously sick of his WFH strategy. 

During a private conference call with House Republicans Thursday, at least three lawmakers raised concerns about keeping the House out of session after it passed a stopgap funding bill that never made its way through the Senate, sources told MSNBC.  

California Representative Jay Obernolte warned that staying home would make it seem like Republicans were “prioritizing politics over government.”

“I think we’re gonna get to a point where it’s damaging to continue to keep the House out of session,” he said. 

Oklahoma Representative Stephanie Bice said she had “concerns” about lawmakers staying in their districts during the government shutdown, and that constituents probably “wonder why we’re not there,” according to one source. She warned leadership to imagine the optics of staying home next week, when lawmakers could just as easily deliver messaging from Washington. 

North Dakota Representative Julie Fedorchak expressed a similar sentiment, arguing that their messaging would be stronger and more consistent if they weren’t all working from home. 

Some Republicans have already voiced their disapproval publicly. 

California Representative Kevin Kiley fumed at the speaker’s comment Thursday, claiming that the House would likely remain out of session for another week because “we’ve already done our job.”

“What the House has done is pass a 7-week Continuing Resolution. The entire reason a CR is necessary is that Congress has not done its job in passing a timely budget,” Kiley wrote on X. “The Speaker shouldn’t even think about cancelling session for a third straight week.”

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has found herself at odds with party leadership, has slammed Johnson all week for sending lawmakers home.

“I think he should really bring the House back in session for many reasons. We have appropriation bills that need to get passed. There is a new Democrat that’s been elected that does deserve to be sworn in. Her district elected her. We have other bills that we need to be passing,” Greene told CNN Thursday. “Any serious speaker of the House is going to build consensus within his conference behind a plan. It’s not something secret that gets worked on in a committee.”

Earlier this week, Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie suggested that Johnson had scattered lawmakers to the winds to avoid swearing in Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who would be the tie-breaking vote on a petition to discharge the Jeffrey Epstein files in full. When pressed about it on Tuesday, Johnson struggled to explain why he was waiting for the House to be in full session, when she could be sworn in in a short pro forma session. 

Two Republican governors have broken with the Trump administration, condemning the president’s decision to release the National Guard into American cities.

Vermont Governor Phil Scott called it an “unnecessary” and “unconstitutional” move that only “further divides and threatens people.”

“We need stability right now in this country—we don’t need more unrest.… I don’t think our guard should be used against our own people. I don’t think the military should be used against our own people. In fact, it’s unconstitutional,” he told VTDigger on Thursday. “Unless, of course, there’s an insurrection, much like we saw Jan. 6 a few years ago.”

Scott also said he would reject a request to deploy Vermont’s National Guard elsewhere, and that Trump calling for the jailing of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was “wrong on many, many different levels.”

Scott did not support Trump in 2016 and called for his removal from office after the January 6 insurrection.

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has been much more supportive of Trump than Scott has in the past, attending rallies and receiving endorsements from him since 2018. Even he thinks this is a bit much.

“We believe in the federalist system—that’s states’ rights,” he told The New York Times on Thursday. “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”

“I was surprised that Governor Abbott sent troops from Texas to Illinois,” Stitt continued. “Abbott and I sued the Biden administration when the shoe was on the other foot and the Biden administration was trying to force us to vaccinate all of our soldiers and force masks across the country.… As a federalist believer, one governor against another governor, I don’t think that’s the right way to approach this.”

Stitt, who made the comments shortly before Scott, indicated he isn’t the only Republican governor who disapproves of Trump sending military from other states into the streets of Chicago, Portland, and Washington, D.C.

“Maybe you just haven’t asked the right ones,” he said. Only time will tell.