FEMA head says he won’t resign over travel investigation

WASHINGTON – The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Sunday that he won’t resign amid reports that he is the subject of an investigation into his use of government vehicles for personal travel.

“I’m here to serve my country every day – that’s all I do,” FEMA Administrator Brock Long said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Long denied reports that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen asked him to step down.

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is investigating whether Long “misused government resources and personnel” on his weekend trips home to North Carolina, Politico reported last week.

Long reportedly began having a government driver take him home after he took control of FEMA last year. Aides who went with him were put up in hotels at taxpayers’ expense, one official told Politico.

While Florence ravaged the Carolinas on Sunday, Long spent much of his time on “Meet the Press.”

Long said he was cooperating with the investigation and defended his use of the government vehicles, which he said are needed to provide secure communication. The vehicle program “ran for me the same way it’s run for anybody else,” he said.

Long also defended President Donald Trump’s denials that 3,000 people in Puerto Rico died a year ago during Hurricane Maria.

Trump is defensive “because he knows how hard these guys behind me work day in and day out for a very complex situation,” Long said. Regardless, “there’s just too much blame going around,” he said.

Brock Long