WASHINGTON — The top official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Sunday said he has never been asked to resign over an internal investigation involving vehicle use, and he echoed President Donald Trump in casting doubt on a government-backed report on the number of deaths from last year’s hurricanes in Puerto Rico.
FEMA Administrator Brock Long said he was cooperating with the investigation into frequent travel — and the use of a caravan of government vehicles — between his North Carolina home and Washington, D.C. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had discussed the alleged improper use of vehicles with Long, and told him he ought to resign if the matter were true.
“Secretary Nielsen has never asked me to resign,” Long said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He added that the vehicles provide him with secure communications capabilities that have been used by previous administrators. Long routinely traveled from Washington to his home in North Carolina using government vehicles staffed by FEMA employees who often stayed in nearby hotels, according to the people familiar with the matter. Since taking the job, Long has spent some 150 days in North Carolina, including weekends and holidays, these people said.
Long, asked Sunday on NBC about Trump’s public derision last week of a study about Puerto Rico hurricane deaths, said “the numbers are all over the place.” “What we’ve got to do is figure out why people die, from direct deaths, which is the wind, the water, and the waves, you know, buildings collapsing,” Long said on NBC, adding that the academic study seemed to include deaths that he claimed had little to do with the storm itself.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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