The House Homeland Security Committee will interview the fired FEMA supervisor who ordered relief workers in Florida to skip homes with Trump flags or signs, a committee spokesman told The Daily Wire.
The committee on Tuesday will interview Marn’i Washington, who was fired last month by FEMA after The Daily Wire reported that she had ordered relief workers in Lake Placid to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they canvassed after Hurricane Milton. Since the story broke, Washington has claimed that FEMA made her a scapegoat, and that it is agency policy to skip “politically hostile” homes.
Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R‑TN) requested Friday that Washington schedule a transcribed interview to discuss her accusations against FEMA and her guidance in Florida.
“While FEMA may maintain that this was an isolated incident, you suggested in a recent interview that this practice of discrimination was widespread throughout FEMA, including in disaster response efforts in North Carolina,” Green wrote. “Government discrimination against American citizens based on a political sign or flag promoting a particular candidate is not only an outrageous abuse of power and a serious betrayal of the public trust, but a direct violation of the First Amendment.”
Whistleblowers told The Daily Wire that at least 20 homes were skipped in Lake Placid due to Washington’s guidance. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell confirmed this number during congressional testimony and said that agency staff had visited the neglected homes to register survivors after the story broke.
Criswell told lawmakers that the incident was isolated, contradicting Washington’s comments in media interviews and allegations from other whistleblowers. One whistleblower told the House Oversight Committee that a FEMA supervisor in Georgia directed a family to remove Trump campaign signage from their home, saying it was not “looked kindly” on by the agency.
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On Tuesday, lawmakers on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee revealed in a letter to Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari that they had heard whistleblower reports from North Carolina alleging whole neighborhoods had been skipped over if there were three or more Trump signs in them.
“In North Carolina, the Committee is aware of reports of FEMA employees skipping any home that displayed a ‘Make America Great Again,’ ‘Drain the Swamp,’ ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ or Trump campaign sign. If the FEMA field team encountered three or more of these signs, the field team could abandon the entire neighborhood without notifying hurricane victims of assistance available to them,” Committee Chair Sam Graves and Rep. Scott Perry (R‑PA) wrote.
FEMA has yet to respond to any of the follow up allegations, but maintain that they are still investigating Washington’s guidance.