A top Federal Emergency Management Agency official who drew scrutiny for past remarks including that he once teleported to a Waffle House has been pushed out of the agency, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.
Gregg Phillips, appointed in December to lead FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, was asked to vacate his position because of concerns about how he is publicly perceived, anonymous sources told The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed Thursday that Phillips is leaving the agency, saying he is taking leave for personal reasons. But sources told CNN the departure was not by his choice, and that new DHS leadership was tired of his public image and clashes with department leadership.
David Arnold, a senior official who left FEMA earlier this year, will fill in as acting leader of the Office of Response and Recovery. The office has more than 1,000 employees and a budget of nearly $300 million and is critical to FEMA’s disaster-response mission.
Phillips posted on social media in April doubling down on his teleportation claim, saying it really happened and that it is connected to his Christianity.
“God will not be mocked,” Phillips posted on Truth Social. “People can debate me. Question me. Even ridicule what they don’t understand.”
He clarified that it happened while he was heavily medicated during cancer treatment.
“The word ‘teleportation’ was not mine,” Phillips posted on Truth Social. “It was used by someone else in the conversation reaching for language to describe something with no easy name. The more accurate biblical terms are ‘translated’ or ‘transported’ — not new ideas for people of faith.”
Phillips was known as a conspiracy theorist, particularly concerning election fraud. He said millions of noncitizens had voted in the 2016 election. President Donald Trump also boosted those claims.
Some agency staff were unhappy with his ouster, saying he wanted to help improve the agency.
“He showed interest in preserving the mission of the agency and helping us serve citizens,” one current agency official told The Post.
Another agency official told The Post that Phillips was one of the only political appointees who supported staff and would push back against leadership such as former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem or Karen Evans, who briefly led FEMA.
Phillips’s departure is the latest in a series of upheavals at FEMA during the Trump administration. As MSI has previously reported, the agency has cycled through temporary leaders and faced staff departures and policy disruptions while the administration has debated how the agency should be reshaped. Trump nominated former Navy SEAL Cameron Hamilton to serve as FEMA’s permanent administrator in May, about a year after firing Hamilton from the agency’s acting top post for refusing to support its abolition.