For the third time in less than a week, a Republican politician has been exposed for expressing affinity for the Third Reich. On Monday, Politico reported on a series of racist and fascist text messages sent by President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Counsel, Paul Ingrassia, 30.

The texts shared with Politico were part of a group chat that included Ingrassia and a handful of other Republican operatives. One of the people who shared the texts with Politico said he came forward because the government needs “to be staffed with experienced people who are taken seriously.”

In the texts, Ingrassia openly defends his fascist politics even when confronted by fellow Republicans. When a member of the text group writes that Ingrassia “belongs in the Hitler Youth with Obergruppenführer Steve Bannon,” Ingrassia replies, “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it.”

A friend of Republican fixer Roger Stone, member of the Italian American Civil Rights League, frequent guest at Mar-a-Lago and on fascist Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Ingrassia repeatedly uses racial slurs in the chat. In one message he writes 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.”

In another thread, Ingrassia hisses that “Blacks behave that way because that’s their natural state. … You can’t change them.” He adds, “Proof: all of Africa is a shithole, and will always be that way.”

After some members of the chat pushed back on Ingrassia’s white nationalism, he doubled down, replying, “I said were [sic] making kwanza illegal in the next Trump admin.” He added, “No moulignon holidays… From kwanza to mlk jr day to black history month to Juneteenth… Every single one needs to be eviscerated.” (Moulignon, variant of moulie, is a racial slur for a black person.)

Opposing Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for president last year, Ingrassia wrote, “Never trust a chinaman or Indian,” and added, “NEVER.”

The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is not a meaningless or powerless position within the US government. The OSC reports directly to the president and Congress and is charged with investigating federal employees who claim retaliation for exposing waste, fraud, abuse or violations of federal law within agencies. It can order agencies to reinstate previously fired whistleblowers and enforces the Hatch Act, which nominally limits the political activities in which workers can engage while employed by the federal government.

In other words, the OSC’s purpose in part is to present the illusion of political neutrality within the US government. By nominating Paul Ingrassia, a Trump loyalist with minimal legal experience and a documented record of extremist, fascistic statements, to head the OSC, Trump was making a conscious political statement that whistleblowers against the administration would not be protected and that the “rule of law” would be subsumed by the “Führer principle.”

Expressing the anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian sentiments that have taken root within the ruling class, in a February 2024 message Ingrassia wrote: “We need competent white men in positions of leadership. ... The founding fathers were wrong that all men are created equal. … We need to reject that part of our heritage.”

On his Substack and social media accounts, Ingrassia has previously argued that “white men” are superior to other racial and ethnic groups and should be given preferential treatment by governments and corporations.

Like several of the Republicans outed last week in a fascist text chain, Ingrassia, a 2022 graduate of Cornell Law School, was a member of the New York Young Republicans Club (NYYRC) and sat on its board until recently. At a 2023 dinner hosted by the NYYRC, Trump personally thanked Ingrassia for his support.

Since Trump’s return to the White House, Ingrassia has held two different positions within the administration, first at the Department of Justice under Pam Bondi, before he was reportedly forced out and moved to the Department of Homeland Security, where he has been serving as Trump’s White House liaison while waiting for a Senate confirmation hearing that was previously scheduled for Thursday.

Ingrassia’s fascist politics have been well known for years. A frequent contributor to the right-wing Gateway Pundit, he supported Trump’s “stolen election” lies and advocated that Trump “declare martial law” in response to losing the 2020 election.

In a report last summer on the fourth iteration of neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes’ America First Political Action Conference, held in July of 2024 in Detroit, journalist and researcher Amanda Moore followed many Republican operatives at the conference, including Ingrassia.

In her report for the Intercept, Moore observed Ingrassia watching a speech delivered by Fuentes for nearly 20 minutes. In the course of his remarks, Fuentes praised Henry Ford as a “great genius” and railed against “the Jews” who “control what Charlie Kirk does.”

Confronted by Moore, Ingrassia claimed he attended the event for only five minutes, thinking it was a “prayer vigil or some type of protest.” Ingrassia refused to answer further questions from Moore after she provided him with video evidence showing him moving toward the platform as Fuentes spoke, while also pointing out that the pair of fascists followed each other on X/Twitter.

Ingrassia’s relationship with Fuentes, who previously dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving dinner along with fellow Hitler-lover Kanye West, was well known within the group chat. In another exchange, a member of the group said the next edition of “Live From America” on Rumble would star “Nick Fuentes & Paul Adolf Ingrassia,” which elicited a “Lmao” (laughing my ass off) from Ingrassia in reply.

Following the publication of the Politico article, at least five Senate Republicans publicly stated they would no longer support Ingrassia’s nomination to head the OSC, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who declared on Monday, “he’s not going to pass.” On Tuesday evening, Ingrassia wrote on X/Twitter that he would be “withdrawing myself” from Thursday’s hearing “because unfortunately I do not have enough Republican votes at this time.”

He offered no apology for his racist and fascist texts, instead writing, “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!”