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NAZI STREAK

President Donald Trump's nomination of Paul Joseph Ingrassia to lead the US Office of Special Counsel (OSC) has triggered bipartisan alarm, with critics accusing the administration of placing an inexperienced and ideologically extreme figure at the helm of a critical oversight agency.

The Office of Special Counsel is an investigative and prosecutorial office that works to protect government employees and whistleblowers from retaliation for reporting wrongdoing. It’s also responsible for enforcing the Hatch Act, which restricts the partisan political activities of government workers.

In May, Trump described Ingrassia in a social media post as a “highly respected attorney, writer and Constitutional Scholar.”

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United States Office of Special Counsel - Wikipedia

The United States Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government. It is a permanent, investigative, and prosecutorial agency whose basic legislative authority comes from four federal statutes: the Civil Service Reform Act, the Whistleblower Protection Act, the Hatch Act, and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). OSC's primary mission is to safeguard the merit system in federal employment by protecting employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices (PPPs), especially reprisal for "whistleblowing".

The agency also operates a secure channel for federal whistleblower disclosures of violations of law, rule, or regulation; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; abuse of authority; and substantial and specific danger to public health and safety. In addition, OSC issues advice on the Hatch Act and enforces its restrictions on partisan political activity by government employees. Finally, OSC protects the civilian employment and reemployment rights of military service members under USERRA. OSC has around 140 staff, and the Special Counsel is an ex officio member of Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), an association of inspectors general charged with the regulation of good governance within the federal government.

Jurisdiction

Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 1214, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel has jurisdiction over most prohibited personnel practice (PPP) complaints brought by executive branch employees, former employees, and applicants for employment (hereinafter simply "employee" or "employees"). When a PPP complaint is submitted, the agency examines the allegations. If OSC finds sufficient evidence of a violation, it may seek corrective action, disciplinary action, or both.

By statute, federal employees may not be retaliated against when they disclose information that they reasonably believe evidences the following types of wrongdoing: a violation of law, rule, or regulation; gross mismanagement; a gross waste of funds; an abuse of authority; or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.[2] The Special Counsel is authorized to receive such disclosures of wrongdoing, but it lacks jurisdiction over PPPs committed against employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and certain other intelligence agencies found at 5 U.S.C. §2302(a)(2)(C)(ii), as well as the Government Accountability Office and any executive branch agencies principally concerned with counterintelligence or foreign intelligence, as designated by the president.

Prohibited personnel practices

OSC's primary mission is to protect federal employees and others from "prohibited personnel practices". Those practices, defined by law at § 2302(b) of Title 5 of the United States Code (U.S.C.), generally stated, provide that a federal employee may not take, direct others to take, recommend or approve any personnel action that:

  1. discriminate against an employee or applicant based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, handicapping condition, marital status, or political affiliation;
  2. solicit or consider employment recommendations based on factors other than personal knowledge or records of job-related abilities or characteristics;
  3. coerce the political activity of any person;
  4. deceive or willfully obstruct anyone from competing for employment;
  5. influence anyone to withdraw from competition for any position so as to improve or injure the employment prospects of any other person;
  6. give an unauthorized preference or advantage to anyone so as to improve or injure the employment prospects of any particular employee or applicant;
  7. engage in nepotism (i.e., hire, promote, or advocate the hiring or promotion of relatives);
  8. engage in reprisal for whistleblowing—i.e., take, fail to take, or threaten to take or fail to take a personnel action with respect to any employee or applicant because of any disclosure of information by the employee or applicant that he or she reasonably believes evidences a violation of a law, rule or regulation; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; an abuse of authority; or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety (if such disclosure is not barred by law and such information is not specifically required by Executive Order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or the conduct of foreign affairs—if so restricted by law or Executive Order, the disclosure is only protected if made to the Special Counsel, the Inspector General, or comparable agency official);
  9. take, fail to take, or threaten to take or fail to take a personnel action against an employee for exercising an appeal, complaint, or grievance right; testifying for or assisting another in exercising such a right; cooperating with or disclosing information to the Special Counsel or to an Inspector General; or refusing to obey an order that would require the individual to violate a law, rule, or regulation;[3]
  10. discriminate based on personal conduct which is not adverse to the on-the-job performance of an employee, applicant, or others;
  11. take or fail to take, recommend, or approve a personnel action if taking or failing to take such an action would violate a veterans' preference requirement;
  12. take or fail to take a personnel action, if taking or failing to take action would violate any law, rule or regulation implementing or directly concerning merit system principles at 5 U.S.C. § 2301; or
  13. implement or enforce a nondisclosure agreement or policy lacking notification of whistleblower rights.[4]

History

OSC was established on January 1, 1979. Until 1989, it operated as the independent investigative and prosecutorial arm of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), or "the Board". By law, OSC received and investigated complaints from employees alleging prohibited personnel practices by federal agencies; enforced the Hatch Act, including by providing advice on restrictions imposed by the act on political activity by covered federal, state, and local government employees; and received disclosures from federal employees about wrongdoing in government agencies. OSC enforced restrictions against prohibited personnel practices and unlawful political activity by filing, where appropriate, petitions for corrective and/or disciplinary action with the Board....

...List of acting and confirmed United States Special Counsels

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politico

Sitting duck’? Meet an EPA environmental justice staffer.

By Sean Reilly, Ellie Borst | 06/04/2025

The Trump administration’s gutting of diversity programs highlights a seeming paradox of vows to deliver clean air, land and water for “every American.”

Swati Rayasam, an EPA environmental protection specialist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, was notified in February that she was being placed on administrative leave with a potentially permanent layoff due to environmental justice-affiliated work for the agency. Sharada Prasad

Swati Rayasam knew her job at EPA would be upended. She just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

“You are receiving this email because you have been identified as an EPA employee working in ‘environmental justice’ or a diversity, equity, and inclusion position and/or office,” the Feb. 6 message read.

Rayasam, an environmental protection specialist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, was immediately placed on paid administrative leave. Now threatened with a potentially permanent layoff, she’s one of hundreds of EPA employees facing dismissal or reassignment in a purge without precedent.

For Rayasam, it likely spells the end of a career begun only a year and a half ago. But the episode also highlights a seeming paradox at the heart of the Trump administration’s agenda as EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin highlights the importance of clean air, land and water for “every American.”

That, says Rayasam, is exactly what her job entailed.

With a background in ensuring that the laws apply “to all the people that live in this country,” she said in one of several video interviews with POLITICO’s E&E News, “I really saw the opportunity at the Office of Environmental Justice to make that a reality.”

Zeldin has axed Raysam’s job, as part of a drive to abolish EPA’s entire Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.

That’s in line with President Donald Trump’s day one executive order to end initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion, which Trump has characterized as a form of reverse discrimination. Zeldin has described the move as “elimination of forced discrimination programs.” At EPA and other agencies, the administration has proceeded with implementation of the White House’s directive at striking speed.

Trump’s and Zeldin’s stances represent “the larger political discourse … and a fundamental misunderstanding of what environmental justice is,” Rayasam said.

Trump’s executive orders, for example, skate over the abundant studies showing that people of color and low-income communities are more likely to face exposure to dangerous pollution. By Rayasam’s description, environmental justice is woven by law into the work of EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, perennially swamped with reviews of new chemicals before they can go on the market.

That misunderstanding has left her, a public health scientist focused on chemicals policy, as “just a sitting duck,” she said.

Instead of doing a job where she mostly worked in tandem with the chemicals office, Rayasam now sits in limbo as her agency ID card gathers dust.

Her plight is emblematic of the whiplash accompanying the transition from President Joe Biden’s administration, which put an unparalleled emphasis on environmental justice, to Trump’s.

‘Too much work’

Her looming ouster results from Zeldin’s insistence that EPA circumscribe its activities only to those authorized by statute.

By his reading, that means EPA needs to reassign at least 100 staffers elsewhere within the agency to help clear the backlog of new chemicals awaiting review by the chemical safety office.

Major amendments passed to the Toxic Substances Control Act in 2016 created a new requirement for regulators to make a safety determination on each new chemical before it is allowed into the market, which industry trade groups complain has created significant wait times impeding the nation’s innovation and manufacturing capabilities.

The new TSCA amendments also require the agency to rein in dangerous uses of some of the most notorious industrial mainstays, such as asbestos or formaldehyde. The statute spells out the factors EPA must consider when deciding which existing substances will be prioritized for review, including consideration of “potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations.”

Rayasam said that’s a “pretty explicit” example of a statute mandating environmental justice practices, and factoring in population and exposure variability is a relatively new priority for EPA.

That’s where the environmental justice office staffers stepped in, she said.

“EPA has always had too much work,” Rayasam said. “So [the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights] provided a breath of fresh air, to be able to say … ‘You have all these people working to assist [the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention] on a specific thing that we’re trying to achieve. Not just because the administration thinks it’s important, but because the statute and statutory amendments actually call for it.'”

Take formaldehyde, for example.

It’s a compound fiercely defended by industry trade groups as critical for sterilizing medical devices and for the production of various building materials or consumer products.

But inhalation of its fumes can lead to cancer, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and other serious long-term illnesses. Communities surrounding formaldehyde manufacturing plants are among the populations at risk for associated chronic illnesses, according to EPA’s final risk evaluation for formaldehyde.

Part of Rayasam’s job was to make sure EPA’s scientific assessments considered the impacts on largely overlooked — and highly exposed — communities in chemical risk assessments, such as formaldehyde exposure for people living in mobile homes.

“All the work that I did was also in the interest of EPA using the best available, most robust science that considered all the communities that it was required to consider, including [potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations],” she said.

‘An ounce of prevention’

Environmental justice, according to a 1998 EPA definition, “means that no group of people should bear a disproportionate burden of environmental harms and risks, including those resulting from the negative environmental consequences of industrial, governmental, and commercial operations or programs and policies.”

According to Zeldin, environmental justice is “the desire is that these people or communities that have been left behind deserve and need attention to be able to remediate and deal with an environmental issue.”

“I couldn’t possibly agree with that definition more,” he said at a conference in March.

But Zeldin works for a president who has methodically razed decades of work to weave environmental justice into the fabric of the federal government’s day-to-day business.

And during various media appearances, Zeldin has blamed the Biden administration for losing sight of that core bipartisan goal and has targeted environmental justice work “as an excuse to fund left-wing activists” who diagnose what the problem is instead of on direct remediation of the issue.

In response to questions, EPA press secretary Carolyn Holran reemphasized Zeldin’s past comments, adding, “the Trump EPA is focused on providing clean air, land, and water for every American regardless of race, gender, creed, and background. … And we’ll do it without wasting billions in taxpayer dollars on left-wing activist giveaways.”

But Rayasam said Zeldin’s assessment overlooks the importance of preventing exposures before they happen.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” she said.

Raised in Durham, North Carolina, Rayasam grew up about an hour’s drive from Warren County, a primarily Black enclave where 1982 landfill protests are seen as a pivotal force in launching the environmental justice movement nationally.

She got degrees in biology and global health, then worked for almost five years in a program on reproductive health and the environment at the University of California, San Francisco. She started at EPA in November 2023.

“People thought I was going to come in like a hammer, basically, for EJ communities,” Rayasam said. “The first thing I would say to literally anybody is ‘You guys have a mountain of work, and I’m just here to try to figure out how to help you get it done. I’m here to pitch in, I would never ask people to modify anything that I was not willing to put my own skin in.'”

Joining Rayasam on the calls with E&E News were attorneys from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a worker advocacy group representing her and other idled environmental justice staffers in a complaint filed in April with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an ostensibly independent agency charged with enforcing federal workforce safeguards.

The complaint seeks to force EPA to put them all back to work partly on the grounds that federal law limits administrative leave to no more than 10 days per year. The special counsel’s office is now investigating, according to Laura Dumais, staff counsel for PEER.

A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.

In February, Trump fired the office’s chief, Hampton Dellinger, a Biden administration appointee who had been contesting the push to cashier thousands of probationary workers throughout the government. In Dellinger’s place, Trump named Jamieson Greer as acting head. Greer, who is also serving as U.S. trade representative, quickly dropped the inquiry into the firings. Trump last week said he was tapping Paul Ingrassia, a former right-wing podcast host, to lead the office. chls baldis

“It really looks like the OSC is now under new management,” Dumais said. “It just really highlights the importance of an OSC that’s not controlled directly by the executive branch.”

*Sean Reilly and Ellie Borst can be reached on Signal at SeanReilly.70 and eborst.64.

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NYT

AUG 2

An agency that scrutinizes the conduct of federal employees has opened an investigation into Jack Smith, the former special counsel who investigated Donald J. Trump before he returned to office, following a request by a Republican senator.

The Office of Special Counsel confirmed on Saturday that it had opened an investigation into Mr. Smith for a possible violation of the Hatch Act, a law that prohibits federal workers from using their government jobs to engage in political activity.

Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, had asked the agency to investigate on the premise that some of Mr. Smith’s actions, such as seeking quick trial dates in the two criminal cases against Mr. Trump, were designed to influence the 2024 election.

The investigation, which was first reported by The New York Post, is unusual in several respects. First, the most severe penalty possible for a Hatch Act violation is dismissal from federal employment, and Mr. Smith left the government at the start of the year. Second, the type of prosecutorial decisions criticized by Mr. Cotton, Mr. Trump and others are far different from the type of cases the O.S.C. typically handles. The office traditionally investigates and addresses violations of federal rules about the civil service.

The investigation comes at a time when lawyers representing fired or demoted federal employees have complained that under Mr. Trump, the O.S.C. is not fulfilling its traditional role.

In February, the president dismissed the agency’s head, Hampton Dellinger, despite a federal law saying that person can only be fired for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

At the time, Mr. Dellinger had been arguing for the reinstatement of thousands of probationary workers who had been fired by the new administration.

Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.

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an 5 23

michael Pack, the Chief Executive Officer of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees Voice of America, was recently found responsible for several instances of misconduct, according to a federal inquiry, Rolling Stone reports.

Per NPR, the former President Donald Trump appointed leader, in 2020, "met with a career employee to discuss which senior leaders at the agency and the Voice of America should be forced out due to their perceived political beliefs," and "firing someone over political affiliation is typically a violation of federal civil service law."

Rolling Stone reports:

The Office of Special Counsel found that 'during his less-than-eight-month tenure CEO [Michael] Pack was responsible for numerous improper activities,' including 'abuse of authority, gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, or a violation of law, rule, or regulation.' The OSC's report concluded that Pack 'abused his authority and retaliated against career USAGM executives who engaged in whistleblowing.'

READ MORE:'A ton of weirdness' is ripping apart the Republican Party: conservative

Furthermore, according to Rolling Stone "the OSC found thatPack interfered with independent journalism at Voice of America and other outlets he oversaw; retaliated against executives who filed whistleblower complaints; and mismanaged and wasted funds by paying $1.6 million in a confidential, no-bid contract to a Virginia law firm to investigate USAGM executives. Pack also 'restricted employee communications with outside parties [and] failed to exempt legally protected disclosures.'"

Regarding what was said about employees' political beliefs, NPR reports an employee wrote "Hates Republicans" in a memo, while another said, "Openly despises Trump and Republicans."

David Seide, a lawyer "with the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit public interest law firm which has represented more than 30 whistleblowers at USAGM, VOA and its sister networks since Pack took office," according to NPR, said, "This report is remarkable in its breadth and depth and detail of the wrongdoing that was underway at these agencies in the last six months of the Trump administration."

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