NEWS ALERT: FEMA whistleblower details ‘waste’ of taxpayer funds and staff waiting in hotels during Hurricane Helene

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From the Daily Mail: The federal government’s disaster response agency has been painfully slow to deploy first responders to help Hurricane Helene victims and making things worse of the ground, multiple whistleblowers have alleged.

The bombshell allegations of mismanagement at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) come just days after the agency took a beating for its boss Alejandro Mayorkas admitting it will not be able to foot the bill for this historic hurricane season.

A letter from a whistleblower to Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. details how the department has wasted and misappropriated funds in the wake of Helene and is now ‘exacerbating the emergency.’

The letter also alleges ‘hundreds if not thousands’ of first responders and service members have been ‘without deployment orders’ with some waiting around in hotels while others ‘have sat idle’ as Americans throughout the southeast are in dire need.

Gaetz announced in a social media post on Friday:

BREAKING: Numerous whistleblowers came forward to my office this week to sound the alarm on FEMA’s severe mismanagement issues, which have left first responders on the ground to assist with Hurricane Helene recovery efforts without deployment orders.

For context, @FEMA redirected $1.4 BILLION of taxpayer funds over the past two years to illegal aliens due to Border Czar Kamala Harris’ open-border policies. @SecMayorkas now says the agency doesn’t “have enough funds” for hurricane season.

Today, I sent a letter to Mayorkas demanding answers on whether FEMA misappropriated taxpayer funds in the Disaster Relief Fund to be used on non-disaster-relief programs for illegal aliens.

Below is the full text of Rep. Gaetz’s letter to Mayorkas on Friday: [emphasis added]

Dear Secretary Mayorkas:

Yesterday, you stated that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is a part of your department, “does not have enough funds to make it through the [hurricane] season.” This news comes after FEMA has spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on migrants due to Border Czar Kamala Harris’ open border instead of prioritizing funding for Americans impacted by disasters.

My office has been in contact with whistleblowers in numerous emergency-management functions at the federal, state, and local levels, and they all point to the same critical mismanagement issues. FEMA has wasted taxpayer funds, misappropriated funds, and left other federal, state, and local responders without deployment orders on the ground.

As reported and further confirmed by my office, hundreds, if not thousands of service members were deployed by the Department of Defense to North Carolina and have sat idle, waiting for FEMA. We have confirmed FEMA employees deployed, on the clock, awaiting orders in hotels. FEMA pre-disaster aid was withheld, exacerbating the emergency. It is also public that NGOs have purchased airline tickets for migrants through the use of FEMA funds.

The aftermath of Hurricane Helene is a major disaster, and your waste and unpreparedness are leaving Americans in distress—unable to access food, water, or medicine—and expecting help, with none coming.

Please provide answers to the following questions to my office by October 11, 2024:

  1. What policies and regulations of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA prevent emergency funds from being wasted on illegal immigrants, including what conditions are placed on grantees of the agency?; and
  2. Of FEMA’s total budget for FY 2024, what portion of funds can be guaranteed to have been spent solely on American citizens, and what portion of funds was or may have been spent on noncitizens?; and
  3. In FY 2024, what portion of funds in the Disaster Relief Fund have been spent on non-disaster-relief programs, such as providing services to illegal aliens or providing routine training to FEMA employees authorized out of general appropriations?

Sincerely,

Matt Gaetz
Member of Congress

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