The Office of the Special Counsel has determined that a former employee of the Federal Emergency Management Agency violated the Hatch Act after issuing a directive to avoid houses featuring Trump campaign signs during recovery efforts for Hurricane Milton.
In the complaint to the US Merit Systems Protection Board, the OSC wrote that former FEMA employee Marn’i Washington “used her official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election” and recommends that she receive disciplinary action.
The complaint also notes that Washington advised her FEMA colleagues at the time to “practice de-escalation and preventative measures.”
Washington, in an interview with CNN, defended her actions as necessary due to “hostile encounters” faced by FEMA workers caused by misinformation about the agency and said that she was simply carrying out the agency’s policies, not creating them herself.
“I did not act on my own volition. Everything we did was out of the focus of safety and making sure our team felt comfortable,” Washington said. “I don’t create policy. FEMA does. I just implement it in the field.”
She added, “There are plenty of reports that discuss hostile encounters, is how FEMA describes it, and our method is avoidance. I don’t understand why we’re hiding that from the American people.”
Former FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said that the agency did not have a policy regarding Trump campaign signs during testimony before a House panel last November.
Washington told CNN that Criswell has not “come to terms with the fact that FEMA has not addressed the safety concerns that the crew leads and the specialists experience out in the field.”
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