On February 11, 2025, FEMA's chief financial officer, Mary Comans, was fired, and DHS and DOGE officials publicly blamed her for payments to New York hotels housing migrants. Elon Musk, then head of DOGE, reposted her photo with the statement “FEMA CFO Mary Comans was just fired for funneling $58M to illegal migrant hotels in Manhattan” and called it a “criminal action,” according to the court's findings.
In Comans v. Executive Office of the President (E.D. Va.), a district judge ruled in July that she had been deprived of her job and her good name without due process. On October 13, 2026, after a name-clearing hearing, Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick adjudged her name “CLEARED.” The government did not contest the facts, and the court found that statements made about her by DHS and Musk were false and that officials knew it. As CFO, “Ms. Comans had neither the authority nor the ability to direct money to or away from a particular grant recipient,” he wrote. “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,” the opinion says, and of Musk's post: “Posting Ms. Comans' picture served no legitimate governmental interest and was little more than state sanctioned intimidation.” The judge cited “the outrageous government conduct, including by those at the highest levels of DHS, in knowingly spreading false information about Ms. Comans.” The only reason given for her firing had been that the president had “the absolute and unquestioned right to do so under Article II.” The administration has appealed the earlier ruling to the Fourth Circuit.