{"id":11632,"date":"2025-07-24T16:04:36","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T16:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-gop-led-panel-delays-testimony-for-trump-special-counsel-nominee\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T16:04:36","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T16:04:36","slug":"senate-gop-led-panel-delays-testimony-for-trump-special-counsel-nominee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-gop-led-panel-delays-testimony-for-trump-special-counsel-nominee\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate GOP-led panel delays testimony for Trump special counsel nominee"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has indefinitely delayed President Donald Trump\u2019s pick to run an independent watchdog that investigates wrongdoing in the federal government.<\/p>\n<p>Paul Ingrassia, the nominee to be special counsel, was scheduled to testify before the panel Thursday but was noticeably absent from the slate of nominees appearing before lawmakers. His selection has drawn scrutiny from critics who argue he is unqualified for the job given his short professional career out of law school and his association with online extremists.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis big thing for our state is, he\u2019s had some statements about antisemitism,\u201d Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott, a member of the committee, said in a brief interview about his questions for the nominee.<\/p>\n<p>Ingrassia has been linked to Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist, and Andrew Tate, a Holocaust denier.<\/p>\n<p>Committee chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he would have more information on the status of Ingrassia\u2019s nomination next week. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), however, suggested it could take longer to resolve.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe committee would obviously be the first line of vetting on that, and I think the fact that they&#8217;ve pushed it to next month \u2014 or after the August recess \u2014 is an indication they are taking a harder look at it,\u201d said Thune said of Republicans on the committee.<\/p>\n<p>The Office of the Special Counsel is also charged with protecting whistleblowers across the federal government and enforcing the Hatch Act, which prohibits some political activity from federal employees.<\/p>\n<p><i>Jordain Carney contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has indefinitely delayed President Donald Trump\u2019s pick to run an independent watchdog that investigates wrongdoing in the federal government. Paul Ingrassia, the nominee to be special counsel, was scheduled to testify before the panel Thursday but was noticeably absent from the slate of nominees appearing before [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}