It’s become a typical, and troubling, story: After BuzzFeed News inquired about the Islamophobic Facebook posts of a senior Army official slated to become deputy director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the man lost the job, the publication reported Friday night.
This week, news broke of the resignation of a Department of Homeland Security analyst who palled around with open neo-Nazis. Days before, a White House speechwriter was fired after it was revealed by CNN that he attended a conference with well-known white nationalists days before the 2016 elections.
Guy Sands-Pingot is a former Army Brigadier and, per his LinkedIn page, current director of Human Capital in the Army Reserve. He was slated to become second in command at USCIS in mid-September, until BuzzFeed News asked the agency about a few of his Islamophobic Facebook posts.
One article Sands-Pingot posted to his Facebook page in 2015 read: “If you wipe your butt with your bare hand but consider bacon to be unclean, you may be Muslim.”
Two years ago, he wrote that it was a “fantasy” to deny “an islamic threat to the non-islamic world and peoples.”
“This is similar to saying crimes committed by nazi storm troopers had nothing to do with the Nazi Party even though every propoganda [sic] point of the Nazi Party political and social platform clearly spelled out what they would do and why they would do it, and to whom they would do it to,” Sands-Pingot added, referring to the connection between terrorist attacks and, he argued, the violence inherently espoused in Islam.
In a separate comment, Sands-Pingot referred to “a fictional ‘moderate’ islam.”
Sands-Pingot didn’t return BuzzFeed News’ requests for comment, the publication said, but he did restrict his Facebook timeline viewing settings after BuzzFeed News reached out to him.
USCIS told BuzzFeed News that “the candidate is no longer slated to commence employment at USCIS.
“After conducting a full and open competition in compliance with all Office of Personnel Management guidance for career vacancies in the Senior Executive Service, including assembling resume review and interview panels as part of the standard hiring process, a candidate was selected for the position of Deputy Director and a tentative job offer was extended, expected to commence mid-September,” spokesman Michael Bars told BuzzFeed News.
“At this point, however, the candidate is no longer slated to commence employment at USCIS,” he said. “USCIS is committed to equal employment opportunity, adherence to merit principles, and fair treatment for all employees.”
