As hundreds of thousands of Americans braced for a collection of brutal storms this winter, the senior official in cost of the federal authorities’s catastrophe response had been on the job just a few weeks — and had beforehand claimed on podcasts that he once teleported to a Waffle House.
Gregg Phillips, appointed in December to lead FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, rose to prominence not by means of his time as a federal emergency administration skilled however as a far-right activist who unfold conspiracy theories about voter fraud and regularly used violent rhetoric towards political opponents.
Most notably, Phillips on a number of podcasts made weird claims to have been involuntarily teleported, together with once to a Georgia Waffle House 50 miles away.
“Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips said on one podcast final yr. “It was real.”
FEMA official detailed ‘teleporting’ expertise: ‘It’s scary in a means’
In January, as a large snowstorm battered a lot of the nation, Phillips was on the center of the action — stationed beside Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in FEMA’s command hub, photographed along with her on the head of a sprawling convention desk, and standing prominently behind her throughout a press briefing.
FEMA officials have described Phillips’ job as among the many most consequential within the company, involving selections that have an effect on search-and-rescue operations, emergency support, infrastructure restoration and in the end distributing billions of {dollars} in catastrophe help.
When Phillips arrived at FEMA in December, some profession officers have been brazenly skeptical of somebody with so little federal authorities emergency-management expertise and an extended document of inflammatory rhetoric being one of a very powerful officers within the company.
Multiple FEMA officers talking candidly to NCS expressed preliminary issues about whether or not Phillips was up to the job. But after just a few weeks, a number of of them informed NCS that, to their shock, Phillips’ hands-on involvement throughout the spate of storms had softened some of their doubts.
“Gregg Phillips is FEMA’s best hope at this moment,” one high-ranking FEMA official informed NCS on the time. “I can’t believe I’m saying that.”
Phillips’ visibility throughout the storm additionally renewed questions on his background — and the rhetoric and beliefs that outlined his rise lengthy earlier than he entered FEMA’s command middle.
A NCS KFile evaluation of Phillips’ social media and podcast appearances discovered that he repeatedly used violent rhetoric, shared conspiracy theories and, in a single case, claimed he’d skilled a number of cases of teleportation. NCS additionally uncovered a quantity of deleted posts from Phillips directing deeply private assaults at Democratic officers and spreading a conspiracy idea following President Donald Trump’s defeat within the 2020 election.
“I would like to punch that b*tch in the mouth right now,” Phillips said in January 2025 on a podcast, referring to former President Joe Biden. “He is a nasty, shitty, crappy human being, and he deserves to die. And I hope he does.”
In response to NCS’s reporting, a FEMA spokesperson said, “This is so silly it’s barely worth acknowledging. DHS, FEMA, and Mr. Phillips are focused on the critical mission of emergency management and ensuring the safety of the American people. Many of the comments cited are taken out of context or represent personal, informal, jovial, and somewhat spiritual discussions made in the context of barely surviving cancer; in a private capacity prior to his current role.”
Phillips is scheduled to testify earlier than the House Homeland Security Committee subsequent Wednesday, as half of a listening to on the impacts of the DHS shutdown.
The podcast, Onward, is co-hosted by Catherine Engelbrecht, a conservative activist who regularly collaborates with Phillips in selling false and unproven claims of widespread voter fraud.
In different feedback on podcasts he co-hosted over the past 5 years, Phillips urged that each Covid-19 and the vaccine have been designed to kill folks, and once said that high officers on the Department of Homeland Security after the failed tried assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024 have been having conferences the place they have been in all probability “planning the next assassination attempt.”
In the identical January 2025 episode through which he made his feedback about Biden, Phillips additionally described experiences through which he said he teleported bodily.
“I was with my boys one time and I was telling them I was gonna go to Waffle House and get Waffle House. And I ended up at a Waffle House – this was in Georgia and I end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was,” Phillips said in the January 2025 podcast episode.
“And they said, ‘where are you?’ and I said, ‘A Waffle House.’ And ‘a Waffle House where?’ And I said, ‘Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.’ And they said, ‘That’s not possible, you just left here a moment ago.’ But it was possible. It was real.”
“Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips added. “It’s no fun because you don’t really know what you’re doing. You don’t really understand it, it’s scary, but yet um – but so real. And you know it’s happening but you can’t do anything about it, and so you just go, you just go with the ride. And wow, what just an incredible adventure it all was.”
In different elements of the episode, he claimed that his automobile “lifted up” whereas he was driving and carried him roughly 40 miles from Albany, Georgia, earlier than setting him down in a ditch close to a church.
Phillips said the experiences have been horrifying and uncontrollable, and questioned on the time whether or not they have been “evil” or “good,” however insisted they have been actual and had occurred greater than once.
Late in January 2025, in another episode whereas speaking a few Trump government order concentrating on former intelligence officers who questioned the veracity of Hunter Biden’s laptop computer earlier than the 2020 election, Phillips escalated his rhetoric.
“I’m going to find you people. I’m going to find you. When I get well, I’m going to find you. I’m going to find you. I’m going to track you down and I’m going to beat the living snot out of you. I’m going to find you,” he added.
Phillips first rose to nationwide prominence after selling the false declare that hundreds of thousands of unlawful votes have been forged within the 2016 election, a story later cited by then-President Donald Trump.
In 2017, NCS’s KFile reported that Phillips gave conflicting and deceptive accounts about VotersTrust, a voter-fraud watchdog group he ran and repeatedly described as a nonprofit regardless of no public data exhibiting it was registered as one.
During a cellphone interview with KFile that yr, Phillips initially denied ever calling the group a nonprofit earlier than later acknowledging he could have “misstated” its standing when confronted together with his personal prior statements.
Phillips’ work was later featured prominently within the movie “2000 Mules,” a documentary that alleged widespread poll trafficking within the 2020 election and was promoted as proof of systemic fraud by Phillips and True the Vote, an election-monitoring group that has lengthy peddled debunked voter-fraud theories.
The movie’s claims have been broadly disputed by election officers, courts and impartial consultants. The movie’s distributor, Salem Media Group, later withdrew “2000 Mules” and its companion guide from distribution and issued a public apology as half of a defamation settlement.
On a since-deleted Twitter account reviewed by NCS’s KFile, Phillips regularly unfold false claims of large voter fraud and deployed crude typo-laden insults at Democratic lawmakers.
“You to to (sic) hold yourself responsible and lose 100 pounds you fatass. Seriously, don’t you care about yourself, your family, the Congress? Being a pig is a choice,” he said in a single submit directed at Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler.
In 2020, Phillips suggested that Michigan state officers have been aligned with China in a means that helped Joe Biden win the state in 2020. Other posts in 2019 said his political adversaries wanted him lifeless, and framed America’s political variations as “first shots in the war,” for the longer term of America. Phillips also alleged that Twitter was “shadowbanning” him to stop what he described because the deployment of an “illegal alien voting algorithm.”
Phillips has used violent and apocalyptic language in different movies posted to social media, saying in a single video from Onward posted on Truth Social from a March 2024 episode that migrants have been coming to kill Americans whereas warning folks to be armed.
“Please protect yourself, protect your family, protect your babies, protect your everyone around you,” he said. “They’re coming from everywhere and they’re coming here to kill you. Be well armed. Take care of your family. Take care of your, your wives, your children, your daughters, everyone. Don’t let this happen.”
“They want you dead,” added Phillips. “They’ve come here to kill you. And if anybody believes it any differently, they’re wrong. These people are here to fight. They’re here to fight us. They’re here at war.”
Phillips urged listeners to find out how to shoot firearms.
“If you don’t know how to shoot, learn to shoot,” Phillips said. “If you don’t know how to move in an urban environment or in a closed environment, learn to move. This is happening. It’s coming now. It’s here.”
In May 2023, Phillips said a Chinese military was being imported to kill Americans on the border.
“We’re importing an army of 10 million people that want you dead. It’s not a game. It’s not a joke.”
“We’ve got Chinese migrants or foreign fighting force moving into the United States and about to cross our border from Texas to California. And there’s really not much we could do about it, y’all,” he added.
Phillips’ arrival at FEMA got here amid a dramatic shakeup, orchestrated by Noem and her then-deputy Corey Lewandowski.
Trump announced in March that Noem would be stepping down following mounting controversies surrounding her management of the company, together with congressional scrutiny of DHS spending.
During her first yr as DHS secretary, Noem had been amongst FEMA’s harshest critics, blasting the company as partisan, bloated and damaged. She vowed to “clean house” and even threatened to scrap FEMA altogether. Her robust discuss and the administration’s sweeping reforms gutted morale and drove out hundreds of catastrophe staff, together with many seasoned leaders.
The upheaval inside DHS was nonetheless unfolding when a large winter storm struck the nation in January, bringing FEMA’s management — together with Phillips — into the company’s command middle for one of its first main checks.
After the storm, Phillips despatched a poem out to workers at FEMA, his first missive to a wider viewers inside the company:
Leadership appeared in motion somewhat than phrases.
Care reached communities earlier than credit score was thought of.
Help moved rapidly as a result of folks mattered.
NCS’s Sylvie Kirsch contributed to this report.