Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) says he will oppose Paul Ingrassia’s nomination to lead the White House Office of the Special Counsel following a POLITICO report on texts that showed he made racist and antisemitic remarks.
“I’m not supporting him,” said Scott in an interview Monday evening. “I can’t imagine how anybody can be antisemitic in this country. It’s wrong.”
Assuming all Democrats oppose Ingrassia, he can only afford to lose three Republican votes on the Senate floor before Vice President JD Vance is called in to break a tie for confirmation.
Scott is a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is set to hold a hearing Thursday on Ingrassia and other pending Trump nominees.
He was among the GOP lawmakers who expressed concerns about Ingrassia back in July, when the panel was last set to hear his testimony. At that time, Ingrassia was known for his ties to Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist, and Andrew Tate, a Holocaust denier.
“This big thing for our state is, he’s had some statements about antisemitism,” Scott said then.
In recent weeks, POLITICO has reported further on Ingrassia’s actions and viewpoints.
POLITICO reported earlier this month that Ingrassia was investigated for allegedly sexually harassing a lower-ranking colleague as White House liaison to DHS. The colleague filed a human resources complaint against him before retracting it days later. Ingrassia’s attorney denied the allegations.
And a text chat shows Ingrassia boasting about his “Nazi streak” and claiming the holiday celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell.”
A lawyer for Ingrassia, Edward Andrew Paltzik, said in a statement suggested the texts could be fake: “In this age of AI, authentication of allegedly leaked messages, which could be outright falsehoods, doctored, or manipulated, or lacking critical context, is extremely difficult.”
The office of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the chair of Senate Homeland, referred comments to the White House regarding the latest reporting on Ingrassia and whether the committee hearing would move forward Thursday as planned. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Other Republican members of the panel were less definitive in how they would proceed. Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma said he wasn’t familiar with the new reporting but he planned to ask Ingrassia about his previous social media posts.
“He has lots of posts that he’s done in the past, and there’s plenty of questions there,” Lankford told reporters Monday.
Diana Nerozzi contributed to this report.
