Jay Mitchell, the federal official placed on leave in February following revelations that he and his wife accepted more than $500,000 in payments from a multi-billion-dollar wildfire compensation fund he oversaw, is no longer a Federal Emergency Management Agency employee after he and the agency “mutually agreed” this week not to extend his contract, Mitchell told Source New Mexico.

Mitchell is leaving the agency nearly five months after FEMA placed him on paid administrative leave following a Source New Mexico and New Mexico PBS investigation that revealed he’d received roughly $266,000 for smoke damage at his Angel Fire home miles from the perimeter of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire.

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Documents the news organizations obtained also showed that his wife, a realtor, received $250,000 for unspecified business losses.

Congress in late 2022 tasked FEMA with overseeing what ultimately became a $5.45 billion fund to compensate victims of the wildfire, because it resulted from two botched Forest Service prescribed burns earlier that year. The blaze destroyed several hundred homes as it burned through a 534-square-mile area predominantly in Mora and San Miguel counties.

The blaze destroyed several hundred homes as it burned through a 534-square-mile area, and victims of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire have continued fighting for full compensation through legal challenges in the years since.

Mitchell took over the office in April of 2024. In July of that year, he applied for compensation for smoke damage he said his home incurred in Angel Fire and accepted the payment about a year later in July 2025, during a period that he and other claims office leaders said they were focusing on paying out claims within the wildfire perimeter, especially to those who lost their primary residences.

Mitchell told Source New Mexico on Monday — the day he said his FEMA contract worth at least $126,000 a year expired — that all of the money he accepted was fully within the bounds of FEMA policies that the agency put in place before he took over.

Mitchell declined to comment on the nature of his wife’s business losses for which she received compensation.

“I don’t talk to my wife about her business,” he said. “That’s her business.”

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He also refused to say whether his home actually suffered damages from smoke and ash during the 2022 wildfire. FEMA’s compensation program required only a signed declaration form within a designated, 2,200-square-mile boundary to receive compensation based on a standardized calculator that pays out per square foot.

“I met the policy requirements, the same as everybody else,” he said. “Do I have to meet a different requirement?”

In late January, Source New Mexico and NMPBS spoke to two separate neighbors in Mitchell’s Angel Fire neighborhood who said they remembered a few days during which they could smell smoke from the wildfire but that it didn’t damage their homes or those of anyone they know.

Mitchell’s home lies within the boundary of a zone in which smoke damage claimants had the lowest barrier for proof, but only by about 1,000 feet, according to a Source New Mexico analysis of a map it previously obtained. Had Mitchell lived on the other side of that line, he would have been required to submit additional proof, including photos of damage or cleaning invoices.

Mitchell noted that he started at the claims office a month after FEMA rolled out its smoke compensation policy, and said he had no influence on those boundaries.

He also said FEMA’s Office of Professional Responsibility cleared him of any wrongdoing in January, about six weeks before he was placed on leave, following its own investigation into potential misconduct. In the five months after he was placed on leave, he was not subject to any further investigations, he said.

FEMA officials on Thursday declined to comment on Mitchell’s departure, including whether they had previously cleared him of wrongdoing, citing the federal Privacy Act regarding individual claimants and its policy of not commenting on personnel matters. A longtime FEMA official, Nancy Casper, has since taken over at the office.

Adan Serna, a spokesperson for U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján’s office, told Source New Mexico in a statement Thursday that, “FEMA did not formally notify our office of OPR’s investigation or findings.”

Now that Mitchell is officially gone from the office, Luján renewed his call for improved operations at the claims office.

“The trust of Northern New Mexico has been lost,” Luján said in a statement to Source New Mexico on Thursday. “Now, under new leadership at the Claims Office, New Mexicans deserve improved transparency and a faster process to get the relief they deserve.”

As of June 10, the office has paid out $3.5 billion in 24,405 claims, a claims office spokesperson said in an email Thursday.

Yolanda Cruz, an advocate for wildfire victims who lives within the wildfire perimeter, told Source New Mexico on Thursday that while Mitchell may be technically correct that he violated no policy, that doesn’t mean what he did was right.

“One, the FEMA policies are deeply flawed. They reward people who were not significantly damaged more than people who were in the burn scar, whose entire lives are gone,” she said. “Two, he exploited that system. Just because you qualify for something, if you know in your heart that you did not have that damage, it was wrong for you to accept that.”