A former staffer with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) who was fired by the agency for telling staff to skip hurricane-ravaged homes with signs backing President-elect Donald Trump has said it was a common practice at the agency out of precaution for staff safety.
Earlier this week, the director of FEMA confirmed that the worker was terminated after reports and screenshots surfaced over the past weekend indicating that homes that had Trump signs should be skipped. Her messages were captured during the response to Hurricane Milton, which slammed Florida’s western coast in October.
She said she is being used as a scapegoat by the federal relief agency, alleging that the policy came from higher-level officials in FEMA.
“Why is this coming down on me? I am the person that jotted down the notes from my superiors and my notation in [Microsoft] Teams chat was exposed from their search capacity team,” Washington told the news outlet.
Washington said that she was made into a scapegoat because she was the one who got caught.
“And it’s easy to then say, ‘Well, ha ha! It’s her name. It’s her writing. Make her accountable for it.’ But I’m just simply executing, again, what was coming down from my superiors,” she said.
Washington also denied claims that she came up with the policy around homes with Trump signs. She also said the policy is more about avoiding situations that make FEMA workers feel uncomfortable or unsafe.
“I know the highlight here is the Trump campaign signage, but if someone is in another, like an urban community and it’s a different culture and someone feels uncomfortable, we can’t go to that home,” she stated. “If you have loose dogs, and someone on the team was comfortable with dogs and another person is not, we can’t go to that home because of safety precautions.”
She said some Trump supporters expressed appreciation for their work, with some even offering to help, but there were also some incidents reported by FEMA workers that took place at homes with Trump signages.
“If you look at the record, there is what we call a community trend,” Washington told Martin. “And unfortunately, 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.”
Responding to the initial controversy, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell condemned the text messages when they were leaked and said the FEMA staffer was terminated from her position. So far, though, neither Criswell nor FEMA have publicly responded to Washington’s statements to media outlets.
She added that “all of my employees and the American people, this type of behavior and action will not be tolerated at FEMA and we will hold people accountable if they violate these standards of conduct.”
“This employee has been terminated and we have referred the matter to the Office of Special Counsel,” her post continued. “I will continue to do everything I can to make sure this never happens again.”
Florida’s attorney general on Thursday filed a lawsuit against FEMA for allegedly discriminating against Hurricane Milton victims due to their political affiliation in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton in Lake Placid, Florida. Helene hit Florida in September, followed a few weeks later by Milton in October.
It names Washington and FEMA as defendants in the suit.
A FEMA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement Friday that the agency does not comment on pending litigation and pointed to Criswell’s statement on the matter.
