“These individuals had access to critical information and intelligence and were entrusted to safeguard Americans from emergencies—and instead they were consuming pornography,” Noem said in a statement, noting at least one FEMA official consumed “racially charged” pornography that “involved bestiality.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s statement cites two instances of inappropriate conduct.
The Washington Examiner contacted DHS for confirmation on how many workers were fired for consuming pornography on the job.
The workers were employed at the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center in Bluemont, Virginia.
“Under President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, we are cleaning house at FEMA to make this dysfunctional agency work for the American people the way that it was intended,” Noem added. “For decades some of these bureaucrats engaged in every act imaginable instead of safeguarding the American people from natural disasters. That ends now.”
In July, the DHS Insider Threat Operations Center first identified an employee who used sexually charged language on a chatbot website that read the comments back in an accent.
One month later, the DHS center determined a government contractor stationed at the FEMA location accessed Reddit nearly 600 times over the course of a month and engaged in sexually explicit conversations online. Some of the content accessed included sexually graphic photos and videos, according to DHS.
Following its investigation, the department also noted that nearly half of FEMA employees frequently log into social media platforms while working.
Since taking office, Noem has been winding down operations at FEMA as Trump threatened to dismantle the agency.
NOEM FIRES 24 ‘DEEP-STATE’ GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES EMBEDDED IN FEMA
Just last week, DHS announced that she had fired two dozen employees in FEMA’s IT department who “brazenly neglected basic security protocols.” Their ineptitude was said to have caused “massive cyber failures,” including an agency-wide lack of multi-factor authentication when logging in.
A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found roughly 2,500 FEMA employees have left the agency between January and June, a 10% decrease in its workforce.
