Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her adviser Corey Lewandowski personally fed false information to far-right activist Laura Loomer to smear a career FEMA official the department had just fired, a federal judge has found.
The finding came in a ruling Tuesday by U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick, who officially cleared the name of Mary Comans, FEMA’s former chief financial officer, reported The Bulwark.
“Ms. Loomer was given this information by then DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and DHS Special Government Employee Corey Lewandowski,” Fitzpatrick wrote. “Ms. Noem and Mr. Lewandowski provided this information to Ms. Loomer with the expectation that she would further disseminate it to her on-line followers.”
The government didn’t dispute the claim in court.
Comans served eight years as FEMA’s CFO under both Joe Biden and Donald Trump. She was fired with three other employees in February 2025, after DOGE staffers concluded that DHS had kept paying to house undocumented immigrants in violation of a Trump executive order.
DHS blamed Comans and issued a press release calling the four “deep state activists” who had made “egregious” payments by “circumventing leadership.”
But Fitzpatrick found Comans made no decisions about the funding. As CFO, he wrote, she had “neither the authority nor the ability to direct money to or away from a particular grant recipient.” He described the department’s handling as “a series of finger pointing and backtracking that resulted in the decision to blame Ms. Comans.”
“For reasons unfathomable to this Court, officials chose to turn the power of the federal government against a singular employee with an impeccable record of public service,” he wrote.
Loomer posted the attack to her more than 1 million followers. Aside from the fact that Comans had been fired, the judge found the post was false – and it’s still online.
DHS also enlisted right-wing influencer Benny Johnson. A department spokesperson told him Comans was “illegally funding migrant luxury hotels,” knowing the claim was false, and expected him to spread it. He did, and Elon Musk, who was then running DOGE, posted similar attacks on X.
Loomer denied being used by the duo. “That’s news to me,” she told The Bulwark. “Nobody ‘used me’ to smear anyone.”
Noem, now a special envoy at the State Department, and Lewandowski, did not respond to requests for comment.
Loomer’s influence with Trump has only grown since then. She helped purge the National Security Council, played a role in the firing of FDA vaccine official Vinay Prasad and flew on Marine One with the president earlier this month.
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