A FEMA employee who was fired for directing her team to avoid canvassing devastated Florida homes with Trump campaign signs is defending herself, stating in an interview that she followed standard protocol on avoiding hostility towards FEMA workers in the field.
Marn’i Washington, the fired FEMA Disaster Survivor Assistance worker who led a crew in Florida after Hurricane Milton, told Roland Martin, a longtime media commentator, on his digital show that the agency provides clear guidance to disengage from “politically hostile” communities, regardless of their political affiliation.
On previous deployments, Washington said she has told her team to avoid any streets where multiple homes had been verbally abusive to FEMA canvassers — including properties that featured signs for the Harris campaign, and homes with no signage at all. On the Milton deployment, Washington said, roughly 20 homes were identified as hostile after canvassers experienced verbal “aggression.”
“We omitted these homes for safety precautions, not because of political plight. Like, no one cares about that. We want to make sure people can register,” Washington said. “You have to understand, when we go out here in the field, we don’t have security detail. We do not have police detail. We are all we have in the field.”
“We’re going to avoid the ones that meet the community trend of political hostility, and they just so happen to have campaign signages in their front yard,” she added. “We cannot take that risk, to deal with that type of behavior. That’s just not ethical for a work environment, for anybody.”
The episode led Republican lawmakers in Washington to threaten a congressional inquiry and the DeSantis administration to launch a state investigation.
Washington said that internal FEMA incident reports would show her decision to skip homes with political signs was part of a broader trend within FEMA to avoid potential danger to her and her colleagues.
Days before Milton hit Florida, another storm that devastated the Southeast — Hurricane Helene — spurred wild conspiracy theories online over FEMA that led to threats of physical violence against its workforce in North Carolina, temporarily halting the agency’s operations there.
At one point, crews were alerted to an encounter with armed militia saying they were “hunting FEMA.” One person was arrested by local authorities in connection to the threats.
“FEMA always preaches avoidance first, and then deescalation — so this is not isolated,” she said. “This is a colossal event of avoidance, not just in the state of Florida, but you will find avoidance in the Carolinas.”
Yet FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell called Washington’s conduct “reprehensible,” while adding that her advice to avoid houses with yard signs supporting president-elect Donald Trump was a “clear violation of FEMA’s core values and principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.”
“I want to be clear to 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,” Criswell said in a post on X Saturday. The administrator is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee next week.
Criswell’s statement came a day after The Daily Wire obtained internal correspondence that showed Washington directing workers to bypass at least 20 homes with Trump signs or flags from the end of October and into November. The outlet also obtained images that show workers wrote “Trump sign no entry per leadership” in government system messages when they skipped over a house.
Washington said she was informed of her termination from FEMA verbally, and did not receive any notice in writing. But she said that, as of Tuesday, she still had access to her FEMA work systems, and told Martin that she saw the agency deleting her records and incident reports.
Since she was terminated, Washington, who is Black, said she has received anonymous calls threatening her with rape and a “proper ni---r lynching.” She told Martin she was taping the interview not from her home, but from “a secure location,” fearing for her safety.
“People are quite cruel,” she said.
She was also fired from her second job at Avanath, a property management company, which told her in an email that she violated “the company’s core values and workplace policies” – an action that followed what Washington said was an improper release of her personal information by individuals at FEMA. Washington told Martin she is open to taking legal actions available to her: “I don’t even know where to start,” she said.
She hopes that Congress investigates the incident, as Republican lawmakers have promised, confident that FEMA’s procedures will come to light and vindicate her story.
“Please do,” she said. “They will find this is not isolated.”
This story was originally published November 13, 2024 10:47 AM.