Officials balk at 'ridiculous' Trump-led effort to justify 'political narrative' at federal agency

An investigation into claims by then-candidate Donald Trump that the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) gave funding to illegal migrants and denied claims by Trump supporters came up empty, so the Department of Homeland Security and its Secretary Kristi Noem ordered a new investigation that produced much different results, according to CNN.

That investigation began during President Joe Biden's term following Hurricane Helene's devastation of western North Carolina in September 2024, and continued into Trump's second term.

In late October 2024, FEMA field supervisor Marn’i Washington delivered "a now infamous directive" to her 11 staffers deployed in Florida following Hurricane Milton: “Avoid homes advertising Trump.”

Washington told CNN at the time that "her supervisors had issued the orders, citing concerns about abuse from Trump supporters. However, the investigation later determined that no such directive was given; it was Washington’s own interpretation of how to protect her team."

FEMA officials working in the Biden Administration fired Washington. "To some, Washington’s actions were proof that Trump was right: FEMA is biased against Republicans," CNN writes.

In March, "Trump’s acting FEMA administrator, Cameron Hamilton, told lawmakers that three additional staffers had been fired in connection with the Washington incident, primarily for poor supervision or misleading investigators," two sources told CNN.

But Hamilton’s letter to Congress said investigators found “no evidence that this was a systemic problem, nor that it was directed by agency or field leadership," CNN reports.

In fact, they found the opposite: that politics rarely came up in disaster zones, CNN says.

Last week, Noem said that the new DHS probe found “for years, FEMA employees under the Biden Administration intentionally delayed much-needed aid to Americans suffering from natural disasters on purely political grounds.”

Noem called it “textbook political discrimination” against Trump supporters, CNN reports.

The new investigation looked at whether FEMA workers who went door-to-door in disaster zones recorded any protected private information about survivors’ political views.

According to CNN, it found "roughly 100 field reports — a small fraction out of tens of thousands of cases during the Biden administration — where FEMA workers visiting homes mentioned campaign signs or made notes related to 'political beliefs.'"

"The report does not show that disaster survivors were denied aid because of these notations, and sources say the gun notations were often made for safety reasons," CNN says.

Noem, however, disagreed and pushed for the new investigation, which, according to former FEMA chief of staff Michael Coen, who served under the Biden and Obama administrations, “doesn’t demonstrate that people were discriminated against in a systematic way.”

“We were hearing that guys in trucks with guns were out looking for FEMA employees, and the teams were freaked out,” a former senior official deployed to North Carolina said. “Let’s have common sense. FEMA employees are not law enforcement officers. They’re not walking around with bulletproof vests. This idea that they’re just going to run into harm’s way to register somebody is ridiculous.”

Current FEMA staffers agree.

“They’ve been looking to prove that narrative any way they can, and to me, this is just a fabricated way of advancing it when really it’s not factually there,” said one of several FEMA officials who asked CNN not to be named for fear of retribution.

“If we do something wrong, okay, hold us accountable,” the official added. “But don’t fabricate it because it meets your political narrative. That’s just bad government.”