White House official accused of sexual harassment
In late July, Paul Ingrassia, the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, arrived at a Ritz-Carlton in Orlando with a lower-ranking female colleague and others from their department. When the group reached the front desk, the woman learned she didn’t have a hotel room.
Ingrassia then informed her that she would be staying with him, according to five administration officials familiar with the episode. Eventually the woman discovered that Ingrassia had arranged ahead of time to have her hotel room canceled so she would have to stay with him, three of those officials said.
The woman, a fellow Trump appointee, initially protested the room arrangement. But, not wanting to cause more of a scene around other colleagues, she relented, according to the officials. So the two, who knew each other previously as friends, went to the room and slept in separate beds. Ingrassia’s attorney said no last-minute changes were made to the hotel reservations.
What’s not disputed is that the two ended up sharing a room on the business trip, and that it resulted in an official investigation.
The fallout from the incident has been the talk of the upper echelons of DHS ever since.
Understandably so.