ICYMI, E&E News: Trump ignored disaster aid request from political rival
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Washington, D.C. – Another day, another bombshell story of Donald Trump withholding disaster relief for political purposes. Bombshell reporting from E&E News shows Donald Trump refused to send disaster relief to Washington state after devastating wildfires because of political differences with the state’s Democratic governor. Funding was only approved once President Biden took office – meaning Trump forced residents to wait months for funding help.
E&E News: Trump ignored disaster aid request from political rival
In early September 2020, wildfires tore through eastern Washington state, obliterating tens of millions of dollars of property, displacing hundreds of rural residents and killing a 1-year-old boy.
But then-President Donald Trump refused to act on Gov. Jay Inslee’s request for $37 million in federal disaster aid because of a bitter personal dispute with the Democratic governor, an investigation by POLITICO’s E&E News shows.
Trump sat on Inslee’s request for the final four months of his presidency, delaying recovery and leaving communities unsure about rebuilding because nobody knew if they would get federal help.
Trump ignored Inslee’s 73-page request even after the Federal Emergency Management Agency found during weeks of inspection that the wildfires easily met the federal damage threshold for disaster aid…
Trump’s spurning of Washington — documented by internal emails, letters, federal records and interviews — is the latest example of how the former president used disaster requests to punish political foes. E&E News reported in early October that Trump had refused to give disaster aid to California after wildfires in 2018 because the state is strongly Democratic…
President Joe Biden ultimately approved Inslee’s request two weeks after taking office — 141 days after Inslee had made it — and has given Washington $45 million.
The time span — nearly five months — is the longest it’s taken a president to approve a disaster request, according to an E&E News analysis of more than 1,000 FEMA damage reports since 2007 when they first became publicly available.
The average time period for presidential approval is 17 days…
E&E News found instances that fit the pattern described by Harvey in which Trump, after he lost the 2020 election, delayed or ignored requests for disaster aid from governors who had criticized him.