Credit: Daily Wire.
Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry told The Daily Wire he was not satisfied with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell’s answers during a Tuesday hearing on an agency employee’s instruction to relief workers to skip homes with Trump flags or signs.
Perry, the chair of the subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management, said that there needed to be an impartial investigation into the guidance that FEMA supervisor Marn’i Washington issued in Lake Placid, Florida. Whistleblowers told The Daily Wire, which first reported on the guidance, that relief workers skipped at least 20 homes.
“It looks like they are going try and cover their tracks here without really looking at it,” Perry told The Daily Wire shortly after the hearing wrapped. “She said she’s working with the Inspector General. Why not just request the Inspector General do an investigation so that it’s done transparently and FEMA either can be cleared or this employee can be cleared? Somebody has done something wrong here. We got two sets of stories. One of them is right, the other one is wrong, and you can’t have the one side adjudicating that.”
Criswell said during the hearing that she would ask the Inspector General to conduct an investigation into the incident. Perry said that Republicans would ensure she follows through.
The Pennsylvania Republican also observed that Criswell — who said that the guidance was an “isolated” incident — contradicted Washington, who alleges that the agency has a widespread policy of skipping “politically hostile” homes.
Washington was fired a day after The Daily Wire reported on the guidance. She has since said that she has been made a scapegoat by FEMA.
“We want to know who’s lying. Somebody’s lying,” Perry said.
“The person that they’ve fired has made multiple claims publicly that there was a culture that existed and that she was directed to do that,” Perry said of the guidance. “The FEMA administrator has said that she has not seen any evidence of that but she didn’t include that she was interested in finding it. She essentially dismissed that there would be any culture or anybody else involved but has no information to verify that.”
Perry said the panel didn’t get a lot of answers on the guidance, apart from claims that there was an ongoing investigation into the matter. Criswell said that anyone else found to be discriminating based on political affiliation would be fired, and that the agency would ensure it didn’t happen again.
Criswell is slated to speak before the House Oversight Committee Tuesday afternoon, where she will again be questioned about the guidance.
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