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For months, complaints have been unfolding from parts of the country that suffered from natural disasters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was moving slowly to send assistance to communities destroyed by floods and hurricanes, including central Texas and North Carolina. Many officials were denounced Homeland Security Secretary Christie Noem.
“We can’t get the phone back,” North Carolina Republican Sen. Ted Budd told the newspaper this month, explaining his attempt to reach Noem’s office. “I can’t start money on them. It’s just a quagmire.” The delay was partially caused by a new policy announced by DHS. This requires NOEM’s personal sign-off for expenses over $100,000, several news outlets reported.
However, records obtained by Propublica show how one region found a way to get FEMA assistance more quickly. It sought help from one of Noem’s political donors.
Records show Noem quickly promoted more than $11 million in federal funds to rebuild Naples, Florida’s historic pier last month after she was contacted by major financial supporters. The pier is a tourist attraction in the wealthy Gulf enclaves and was severely damaged in 2022 by Hurricane Ian.
Frustrated city officials worked for months without success to obtain disaster aid. However, just two weeks after the donors intervened, they were celebrating a sudden change of property. “We currently have warp speed at FEMA,” a city official wrote in an email. A representative of FEMA wrote: “According to leadership, we’re pushing the project straight away.”
In addition to tracking money quickly, Noem flew to Naples, a government plane, to tour the pier. She then stayed over the weekend and had dinner with local cardiologist Sinan Gersoi at the French restaurant Blue Provence. According to a report by Records and an interview with the mayor of Naples. This account is based on Propobrica text messages and emails obtained through a request for public records.
Noem’s actions in Naples suggest injecting political support into institutions tasked with saving lives and rebuilding communities that have been wiped out by disasters. Also, by NOEM personally handling all six-figure expenses in the agency and consolidating those who win and lose in the pursuit of federal relief dollars, it raises concerns about the discretion that NOEM personally gave themselves in dealing with all six-figure expenses, experts said.
Jeffrey Schlegermilch, director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Response, said politics has long been a factor in federal disaster relief. One study found, for example, swing states are more likely to receive federal support. But “I’ve never heard of this terrible thing. The donor calls and says he needs help and says he’ll get it,” he said.
In a statement, DHS spokesman Tricia McLaughlin said, “This has nothing to do with politics. Secretary Noam also visited.
“Criticizing the secretary’s visit to the pier is odd as she works to solve this issue for the more than 1 million visitors who were visiting the pier,” McLaughlin added. She did not answer questions about the donor’s role in fostering funding with him or Noem’s relationship. He called me, and Garsoy said, “I got lost,” and hung up. He did not respond to detailed follow-up questions.
Noem has been criticized for creating a bottleneck with FEMA. According to CNN, it took several days to deploy a critical search and rescue team this summer when floods hit Texas this summer and eventually killed more than 100 people. “Nearly everything related to Helen is over $100,000, so they’re stacking it on her desk, waiting for her signature,” Republican Senator Budd said this month.
Noem defends its cost policy, denies Texas’ delay in flood response and says it saved billions of dollars. “Do you think you wake up every day and Americans pay for this?” she said recently. “And these dollars are doing what the law says they should? I’ll make sure they go there.”
Once a sleepy fishing town, Napoli is now home to CEOs and billionaires (the property recently listed at $295 million has been headlined as the most expensive home in the United States). The city is known as a key stop for Republican politicians to raise money, and Norm has multiple fundraising activities in the area. State credit card records suggest that he has visited Naples at least 10 times in the past four years as governor of South Dakota.
Property tax records show that Noem’s top advisor Corey Lewandowski also owns a home in Naples, near the city’s pier. Lewandowski is an unpaid staff member of DHS who serves as NOEM’s de facto chief of staff. (Media reports claim that the two were romantically involved, both denies.) Lewandowski told Propublica that he was not involved in the jetty decision and was not in Naples during Noem’s visit.
For the first seven months of the Trump administration, the rebuilding of the pier was in bureaucratic purgatory. For a long time, the city has struggled to ensure the regulatory approval needed to begin construction. And the email suggests that a wave of Trump’s federal layoffs slowed the process even further. “These agencies are undergoing substantial restructuring and staff cuts,” city officials told annoyed constitutionalists in early August. It “sometimes means starting over with a new reviewer, something we’ve faced many times.”
McLaughlin said “both past FEMA and the city are responsible for the delay.” She has listed “several failures” since its launch in 2023, including “changes in FEMA staff” and indecisiveness by the city government.
By this summer, Naples officials were desperate. In June, we recruited Senator Rick Scott from R-FLA and pushed FEMA to move on. “Yesterday, Secretary Noem was told that he had to “personally” approve the pier project before FEMA funding was mandatory,” city officials wrote to senator staff. The mayor of Naples, Teresa Heidmann, also personally wrote a letter to FEMA. Heitman said she was “confusing” by the delay and asked for guidance.
Heitman has long paid to expensive consultants in Washington to help her city navigate the process. But she “feels more and more helpless,” she later said. On July 18th, the mayor emailed himself a Google search. “Who is the person in charge of homeland security?” She was planning to go straight to Noem.
Heitman decides that Garsoy is her best bet to get Noem’s attention. Garsoy, a Naples cardiologist, has no apparent experience working with the federal government. Much of his online footprint is focused on his enthusiasm for pinball. However, Gursoy gave NOEM at least $25,000 in 2022 to support the governor’s campaign. (In South Dakota, campaign contributions remain relatively small.)
Planning plans for the 2024 Republican National Convention acquired by Propublica, Florida doctors are listed as attendees in South Dakota delegation, a state with no apparent connection other than NOEM support. Heitman told Propovica that Garsoy introduced Noem at a political event while Noem was governor on private property in Naples.
“Hello, this is Teresa,” the mayor texted Garsoy in early August. “I really need your help,” she explained the entanglement of bureaucracy she was fighting for. “FEMA holds us,” writes Heitmann. “Kristi Noem was able to set fire under FEMA employees.”
Garsoy replied: “Okay. I’ll ride it.”
The following week, on August 11th, the doctor gave Heitman an update. “Christie was off for a long time for a few days, so I let her go,” he said. “I txt her now.” Within 24 hours he had exciting news. He told the mayor to expect a call from Noem’s “FEMA Fixer” soon.
The identity of the “fixer” is not clear, but by August 27, Naples officials had seen “gusts of activity” from Noem’s agency. That day, FEMA staff told the city that “FEMA intends to promote funding” for the pier. “When I reached out to ask for help, Secretary Noem took action immediately,” the mayor immediately posted on Facebook.
Christie Noem secretly cut political donations
Two days later, Noem flew to Naples. Her schedule included a 30-minute walkthrough on the pier with the mayor, followed by reservations and dinner at a nail salon in Blue Provence, serving short ribs of wagyu beef and seared foie gras. Afterwards, Gnome stayed at the 4-star Naples Bay Resort & Marina over the weekend. Heitman told Propoblica that she wasn’t a French dinner, but Garsoy was. “I didn’t ask her to come, but she did appear,” the mayor told local news. “I was very impressed.”
Before she left town, Noem posted on Instagram about the pier in Naples. She said she was finally getting the project back on track. “Americans are better than years of deficits and disaster response failures,” Noem writes. “Under @potus Trump, this incompetence ends.”
The DHS did not answer questions about whether the government paid for the Gnome weekend in Naples.
Is there anything I need to know about Kristi Noem, Corey Lewandowski, and DHS? Josh Kaplan can be contacted by email at joshua.kaplan@propublica.org at 734-834-9383. Justin Elliott can be contacted by email at justin@propublica.org at Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240.
