{"id":109138,"date":"2025-03-06T00:03:25","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T00:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/ex-fema-official-who-was-fired-over-migrants-staying-in-luxury-hotels-files-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2025-03-06T00:03:25","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T00:03:25","slug":"ex-fema-official-who-was-fired-over-migrants-staying-in-luxury-hotels-files-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/ex-fema-official-who-was-fired-over-migrants-staying-in-luxury-hotels-files-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-FEMA official who was fired over migrants staying in &#8216;luxury&#8217; hotels files lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/syndication.abcaudio.com\/files\/2025-03-05\/News_NYCMigrants_3525.png\" alt><figcaption>Spencer Platt\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\">(WASHINGTON) &#8212; \u00a0A former top FEMA official\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/fema-officials-fired-after-musk-claims-paid-house\/story?id=118692963\"><span class=\"s1\">who was removed<\/span><\/a>\u00a0as part of the political blowback over payments to New York City for housing migrants in what critics called &#8220;luxury hotels&#8221; has sued the Trump administration, alleging she was &#8220;unlawfully terminated from her position&#8221; without due process.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Mary Comans, who served as the FEMA&#8217;s chief financial officer since 2017, claims in the suit that her firing led to her being &#8220;falsely condemned online&#8221; by prominent individuals including tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has been overseeing government\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/elon-musks-government-dismantling-fight-stop\/story?id=118576033\"><span class=\"s1\">cost-cutting measures<\/span><\/a>\u00a0as the head of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Comans&#8217; lawsuit, filed in the District of Columbia on Tuesday, claims she was terminated \u201cwithout any warning.&#8221; The suit says the government &#8220;failed to undertake any process to enable Ms. Comans to appropriately respond&#8221; to the allegations, and then put out a press release that she claims was in violation of the privacy act.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">&#8220;Additionally, the defendants falsely, deliberately, and publicly portrayed Ms. Comans&#8217; actions in such a manner that third parties have asserted her conduct to have been criminal, which is defamation per se, thereby further contributing to the damages she has suffered,&#8221; the filing states.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">The lawsuit says the press release led to her action being &#8220;widely, publicly, and falsely condemned&#8221; by online influencers including Musk. The lawsuit includes a screenshot of one of Musk&#8217;s tweets replying to a post about Comans, in which he wrote she had committed &#8220;A criminal action.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">&#8220;Prior to her termination, Ms. Comans was an exemplary employee with absolutely no disciplinary history and had received &#8220;Achieved Excellence&#8221; ratings for every year that she served as an SES,&#8221; the filing states.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Comans has asked a judge for a declaration that DHS and FEMA&#8217;s actions were illegal, and has requested monetary damages.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spencer Platt\/Getty Images (WASHINGTON) &#8212; \u00a0A former top FEMA official\u00a0who was removed\u00a0as part of the political blowback over payments to New York City for housing migrants in what critics called &#8220;luxury hotels&#8221; has sued the Trump administration, alleging she was &#8220;unlawfully terminated from her position&#8221; without due process. Mary Comans,<span class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/ex-fema-official-who-was-fired-over-migrants-staying-in-luxury-hotels-files-lawsuit\/\">Read More &rarr;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,31,2],"tags":[273,271,276,274,270,123,275,133,124,272,102,103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}