Oversight panel presses FEMA administrator on hurricane relief discrimination allegations

 The House Oversight and Accountability Committee grilled Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Deanne Criswell on Tuesday over a since-fired FEMA employee’s directive that staff avoid houses with Trump campaign signage in the wake of Hurricane Milton and the employees’ allegations that she was “simply following orders.”

The fired FEMA employee, Marn’i Washington, has alleged she was scapegoated, saying in a Monday interview that she doesn’t “create policy” and denying that she violated the Hatch Act, which restricts political activity by government employees.

“So firstly, I’m being framed. There’s no violation of the Hatch Act. I was simply following orders,” Washington said in an interview on NewsNation’s “Dan Abrams Live.”

“I execute orders. I don’t create policy. I do not reinvent the wheel. My record shows that,” she said later in the interview.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked Criswell during the hearing whether Washington was “lying” about the practice being common and whether the FEMA administrator had directly spoken to the 13 other people to whom the orders were texted.

Criswell said she had not directly spoken to them but suggested they would be interviewed as part of an investigation into the incident.

She also reiterated in response to questioning from ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) that she had requested an Office of Inspector General investigation into the orders, echoing her response to Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) in a separate hearing before the House Transportation Committee’s Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management on Tuesday morning.

The Oversight committee was frequently split along party lines in their lines of questioning for Criswell and the broader themes they tackled within the hearing. Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Jordan attempted to cast the directive as part of broader disdain for supporters of President-elect Trump, while House Democrats frequently brought up the spread of misinformation surrounding FEMA’s presence and the threat of climate change. 

False claims about government funding began circulating online shortly after Hurricane Helene struck Florida, Georgia and North Carolina in September. Then-candidate Trump was among those who shared such claims on social media, including that the government was purposely withholding aid from Republican hurricane victims while FEMA redirected disaster relief funds to migrants. FEMA refuted both claims, as well as other inaccurate information surrounding the agency’s storm response.

Government officials, meanwhile, warned that the spread of inaccurate information was complicating relief efforts.

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) questioned Criswell on Tuesday on the effects of such misinformation, to which the FEMA administrator responded that it “makes individuals who have perhaps lost everything concerned about whether they should come to us for assistance.”

The panel’s Republicans, meanwhile, pressed Criswell on whether Washington’s orders were reflective of any broader official or unofficial agency policy. 

Questioned by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) about whether FEMA would be willing to provide all internal communications involving the fired employee and her former supervisors, Criswell suggested the agency would, saying it “always cooperates” with such requests for information.

On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said FEMA “did the right thing” by firing Washington and calling for an investigation, and faulted Washington for saying she was motivated by discomfort in certain areas of the state, saying she should instead have gone through proper channels to address them.

However, Moskowitz blamed deeper issues within FEMA on the size of the bureaucracy within its parent department, the Department of Homeland Security, saying that “this is not new, this has been going on for a while, it happened during the Trump administration.”

“FEMA can’t make the changes you want them to make, Homeland won’t let them because there’s 30 people around a table,” he added.

Committee members were also split in their assessment of FEMA’s responses to the recent hurricanes. 

Raskin singled out the agency as a commendable institution in his opening remarks, pointing to praise from Republican Govs. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Ron DeSantis of Florida for the agency’s response to recent storms.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), meanwhile, whose district was affected by Hurricane Helene, suggested in her questioning of Criswell that FEMA had not been forthcoming in providing reliable information to affected citizens.

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4998801-fema-administrator-grilled-hurricane-milton-trump-campaign-signs/