“Not gonna pass”: Special Counsel nominee Ingrassia’s racist texts spook Republican senators

The nomination of Donald Trump‘s pick to lead the Office of Special Counsel is teetering on the brink thanks to newly leaked text messages full of racist remarks.

In a group chat with Republican operatives, Paul Ingrassia boasted of having a “Nazi streak” and said that celebrations of Martin Luther King Jr. should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell,” per a report from Politico. The 30-year-old former podcast host, who currently serves as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, was already facing scrutiny for a separate harassment investigation earlier this year.

In the texts shared by Politico, Ingrassia used an Italian-American slur for Black people while saying no federal holidays celebrating Black people or traditions should be allowed.

“From kwanza to mlk jr day to black history month [sic] to Juneteenth…every single one needs to be eviscerated,” he wrote.

In other messages, he claimed that “Blacks behave that way because that’s their natural state” and that “the founding fathers were wrong that all men are created equal.”

Ingrassia’s lawyer, Edward Paltzik, has disputed the authenticity of the texts in a statement to Politico.

“Even if the texts are authentic, they clearly read as self-deprecating and satirical humor,” he wrote.

The fallout from the report has been swift, with several Republican senators signaling they will vote against confirmation and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., urging the White House to withdraw the nomination altogether.

“He’s not gonna pass,” Thune told reporters Monday.

At least three GOP senators on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — Rick Scott of Florida, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and James Lankford of Oklahoma — have signaled that they will oppose Ingrassia. With Democrats united against him, losing even a handful of Republican votes would doom Ingrassia’s nomination.

“I’m not supporting him,” Scott shared. “I can’t imagine how anybody can be antisemitic in this country. It’s wrong.”

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This is the second leaked text scandal that the GOP has been embroiled in in recent weeks. Racist texts from a Young Republicans group chat were unveiled earlier this month. Those text chains also featured racial epithets for Black people as well as jokes about the Holocaust. The National Young Republican Federation issued a statement saying it was “appalled by the vile and inexcusable language.”