Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio compared a text message allegedly sent to disaster relief workers to comments by disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok Tuesday while questioning Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Deanne Criswell about a directive to skip houses whose residents advertised their support for President-elect Donald Trump.
The text message, reportedly sent by former FEMA Disaster Survivor Assistance crew leader Marn’i Washington, listed a series of “best practices” that included avoiding “homes advertising Trump signs.” Jordan pressed Criswell about the message, putting it on screen during a House Oversight Committee hearing.
“She said it’s common practice, you said it’s reprehensible and isolated. Both statements can’t be true, so someone’s not giving us the facts and I’m trying to figure out who’s not telling the truth,” Jordan told Criswell, who said the agency was investigating.
After Jordan pressed Criswell about another FEMA employee saying Washington had to have been given those instructions by superiors, he turned to the text message.
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“Let’s look … maybe the best evidence we have is the actual screenshot. Can you put the screenshot up on the, on the screen? Let’s look at what the text message said,” Jordan said. “The text message said: implement best practices like — this is the best practices, we’re gonna implement them and they talk about making sure you go in pairs or with more than one person, avoid the Trump homes, drink your water, take your towel, coconut water.”
“So, stay hydrated, stay with someone else, and don’t go to the Trump homes. It seems pretty common and matter-of-fact, in the actual evidence we do have, the text message itself. But you’re still saying Ms. Washington and this other person aren’t telling the truth,” Jordan continued.
FEMA came under fire over the relief efforts for western North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which killed at least 227 people. Jordan told Criswell that the comments in the text message reportedly sent by Washington were similar to other instances where liberals demeaned Trump supporters after he noted a FEMA official told workers to be mindful “about the types of people who are in western North Carolina.”
“You know what it sounds like? It sounds like Peter Strzok … when he said ‘I just went into Walmart, I can smell the Trump supporters.’ It sounds like Joe Biden when he said all the ‘garbage’ I see is the Trump supporters out there,” Jordan said. “It sounds like the guy the Democrats had, the professor the Democrats had testify back in 2019 in the impeachment — conservatives, ‘especially very conservative people, tend to spread out,’ perhaps because they ‘don’t even want to be around themselves.’”
“This disdain, this mindset that’s in the government, where they’re, everyone’s deplorable, everyone’s garbage, everyone is, you know, smelly people at Walmart and oh, be mindful of those people in western North Carolina,” Jordan continued. “That’s what it sounds like and again, the best evidence is the text message we have which reinforces that mindset that we have seen from so many people in our government.”
The FBI fired Strzok on Aug, 13, 2018 over texts to FBI attorney Lisa Page, who Strzok had an affair with, in which Strzok disparaged Trump and his supporters while investigating alleged collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
“In my 23 years in the FBI, I have not seen a more impactful series of missteps which called into question the entire organization and more thoroughly damaged the reputation of the entire organization,” then-FBI deputy director David Bowditch wrote in a draft of the termination letter, according to the Washington Examiner.
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