Matt Gaetz says FEMA 'wasted' and 'misappropriated' taxpayer funds in disastrous Hurricane Helene response

The federal government’s disaster response to Hurricane Helene has been nothing short of a disaster itself, as well as corrupt, according to information relayed by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) whistleblowers to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). The accusations are just another nail in the coffin for an agency that has been under direct attack since the beginning of the emergency.

First came revelations that FEMA’s own website said delivering “equity” was job one for the government agency. Then it was revealed that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had said there isn’t enough money in the coffers to pay for hurricane relief efforts.

The letter to Gaetz, prompting the congressman to address Mayorkas, details how FEMA has “wasted” and “misappropriated” money reacting to the disaster and is now “exacerbating the emergency.”

The correspondence charges that “hundreds if not thousands” of first responders and military members sat idly in hotels “without deployment orders” as hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand are still missing and 75,000 people in North Carolina alone are still without power.

“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,” Gaetz wrote in his brutal assessment to Mayorkas on Friday.

“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,” he continued. “FEMA has wasted taxpayer funds, misappropriated funds, and left other federal, state, and local responders without deployment orders on the ground,” Gaetz wrote.

With over 230 Americans now confirmed dead and large swaths of the area ravaged by flooding, some towns entirely wiped out, and 150,000 citizens seeking assistance and cleanup demands still enormous, many are questioning why FEMA has so much money—more than $1 billion—to spend on illegal immigrants. The administration has denied that this is the case, but in September 2023, they also said that FEMA funds were being sent to aid cities dealing with the border crisis.

Gaetz was particularly incensed that military personnel were deployed to the destruction and not told what to do next. “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,” Gaetz wrote.

“We have confirmed FEMA employees deployed, on the clock, awaiting orders in hotels. FEMA pre-disaster aid was withheld, exacerbating the emergency."

The Republican congressman has demanded to know how much money DHS and FEMA have spent and continue to spend on non-citizens vs. American citizens.

“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?” Gaetz asked Mayorkas.

“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?”

Gaetz set a deadline of Oct. 11 for Mayorkas to respond to his questions and the concerns raised by the whistleblowers.