A federal judge in Virginia has ruled that Elon Musk engaged in “state-sanctioned intimidation” against former FEMA Chief Financial Officer Mary Comans when he published lies about
Musk, the world’s richest person, was working for the Trump administration as head of DOGE when he shared these messages on February 11, 2025. The Department of Homeland Security said the next day that it was firing Comans and three colleagues, and called them “deep state activists.”
In his order Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick cleared Comans’ name.
Comans served as FEMA’s chief financial officer from approximately January 2018 to February 2025, and also served as FEMA’s chief operating officer from 2020 to 2021.
Fitzpatrick wrote in the order that “the facts establish that senior government officials,” including Musk, then a special government employee, had “engaged in a coordinated public relations campaign to impugn Ms. Comans’ personal and professional integrity.”
“Mr. Musk was the head of DOGE, he knew or should have known that any payments made to state or local governments via a FEMA grant in February 2025 were approved by his subordinates,” the judge wrote.
He added that Musk posted a photo of Ms. Comans “to his millions of followers while falsely calling her government service a ‘criminal action,'” an act Fitzpatrick described as “little more than state-sanctioned intimidation.”
CNBC has contacted lawyers for Musk and the White House involved in the case for comment.
The Democracy Defenders Fund, which was involved in Comans’ case, said in a statement that it was pleased with the decision.
“Mary Comans served in the federal government for 21 years,” said Craig Becker, the group’s affirmative litigation manager. “Career public servants are people, not pawns, and no one who has dedicated their life to serving the American public should have their reputation destroyed for partisan and political purposes.”
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