A federal judge on Tuesday formally cleared the name of a former high-level Federal Emergency Management Agency officer who faced a barrage of attacks from the Trump administration after her termination, citing “outrageous government conduct” perpetuated by top government officials.
The Department of Homeland Security fired Mary Comans, FEMA’s chief financial officer, on Feb. 11, 2025, but her termination notice did not list a cause. The same day, DHS issued a press release saying she had been fired “for circumventing leadership to unilaterally make egregious payments for luxury NYC hotels for migrants.”
High-ranking government officials, including Kristi Noem and Elon Musk, “engaged in a coordinated public relations campaign to impugn the personal and professional integrity of Ms. Comans,” U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick wrote. DHS officials also provided a statement to the press incriminating Comans for the alleged hotel scheme, which the department knew “was false at the time it was made,” he added.
Musk, who started leading the Department of Government Efficiency in January 2025, accused Comans of “criminal action” in a post on X on the day she was fired. And during her tenure as homeland security secretary, Noem provided information to far-right activist Laura Loomer, who made posts further denigrating Comans’ image.
Trending
Musk also reposted a picture of Comans, revealing the civil servant’s face to his millions of followers.
“Posting Ms. Comans’ picture served no legitimate governmental interest and was little more than state sanctioned intimidation,” Fitzpatrick, who presided over the name-clearing proceedings, wrote in his ruling.
The attacks on Comans “were based on the incorrect belief” that she had acted in violation of President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order that froze federal funding to non-governmental organizations that provide resources to undocumented immigrants, Fitzpatrick wrote.
The confusion over the hotel payments spurred from whether the order extended to pausing similar FEMA payments made to state and local governments. Comans continued to make tens of millions in payments to New York City’s Office of Management and Budget for hotels for the immigrants after FEMA decided that payments should continue to be issued to state and local governments.
“This decision was explicitly approved by employees of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) who were embedded with DHS and were reviewing and approving all funding initiatives,” Fitzpatrick wrote.
Comans filed two lawsuits against DHS, FEMA and the Executive Office of the President after her termination, arguing members of the Trump administration had knowingly defamed her using false statements and that she had been unlawfully terminated without due process.
In July, U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff found that Comans had been unjustly fired. Nachmanoff ruled that Trump’s decision to unilaterally fire her under Article II of the Constitution ignored Comans’ right to review her termination through the Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles appeals for federal employees.
Nachmanoff’s decision did not reinstate Comans, and the Trump administration is actively appealing that ruling. But, in an unusual move, Nachmanoff ordered a formal name-clearing hearing for the former FEMA official — after which Fitzpatrick ruled in her favor to “correct the public record and establish as a matter of law that the statements made by these officials about Ms. Comans were objectively and demonstrably false.”
Trump has faced scrutiny for issuing several executive orders to bypass the traditional mechanisms for appeal for civil servants in the executive branch.
Comans isn’t the first government employee to challenge their termination. The Justice Department fired Maurene Comey, a senior federal prosecutor and the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, in July 2025. Like Comans, Comey filed a lawsuit challenging what she sees as an unconstitutional termination linked to Trump’s deeply held issues with her father.
Author
