‘FEMA is Lying!’ Fired Official Claims It Was Agency Policy to Deny Hurricane Relief to People with Trump Signs

Screenshot via Roland Martin Unfiltered

The FEMA supervisor who was fired for telling relief workers to bypass the homes of supporters of President-elect Donald Trump in the wake of devastating hurricanes this fall spoke out on Tuesday and insisted the policy is commonplace in the federal agency.

Marn’i Washington joined Roland Martin on Tuesday to discuss the fallout from news of her firing. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell announced on Saturday that Washington had been let go after she told relief workers to “avoid homes advertising Trump” in Florida. Criswell claimed Washington did not uphold the “core values” of FEMA.

“More than 22,000 FEMA employees every day adhere to FEMA’s core values and are dedicated to helping people before, during and after disasters, often sacrificing time with their own families to help disaster survivors. Recently, one FEMA employee departed from these values to advise her survivor assistance team to not go to homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Trump,” Criswell said.

Washington pushed back on this during her appearance on Martin’s show, claiming one of the “core values” of FEMA is to avoid potentially hostile encounters, which they attributed to Trump supporters in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton ripping through the southeast. She flat out accused FEMA of “lying” about the situation.

Washington told Martin that FEMA pushes for a strategy of “avoidance” and shared a text message exchange with one relief worker who said they were avoiding a certain road in Florida because it was “politically hostile,” i.e., populated by open Trump  supporters. The fired FEMA worker explained that “avoidance” of Trump homes is part of a strategy to steer clear of “unwelcome behavior,” claiming Trump voters are typically more hostile towards federal workers.

Washington continued:

If you look at the record, there is what we call a community trend and it just so happened that the political hostility that was encountered by my team — and I was on two different teams during this deployment — they just so happened to have the Trump campaign signage. FEMA always preaches avoidance first and then de-escalation, so this is not isolated, this is a colossal event of of avoidance, not just in the state of Florida, but you will find avoidance in the Carolinas. Senior leadership will lie to you and tell you they do not know, but if you ask the DSA crew leads and specialists what they are experiencing in the field, they will tell you. Demand for FEMA to give you those incident reports.

Washington explained she has been a “reservist” for FEMA since 2019, meaning she also maintained a civilian job and only worked full time for FEMA during “deployments,” or relief efforts. She said she has also lost her civilian job following FEMA’s firing of her.

On X, Donald Trump Jr. responded to Washington’s interview with Martin by musing that “When I went to Sarasota Township and Bat Cave, North Carolina some of the hardest hit areas and they had barely seen anyone from FEMA, I knew this was going to be the case.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) previously announced an investigation into what he described as “blatant weaponization” and “targeted discrimination” by FEMA.

“The blatant weaponization of government by partisan activists in the federal bureaucracy is yet another reason why the Biden-Harris administration is in its final days,” the governor wrote on X. “At my direction, the Division of Emergency Management is launching an investigation into the federal government’s targeted discrimination of Floridians who support Donald Trump.”