Laura Loomer has spent months attacking everything from Tucker Carlson to the head of the White House records’ office, gaining a following of more than 1.7 million on X while ratcheting up her influence with President Donald Trump.

The far-right provocateur also turned her sights on Puerto Rico and its eight-year effort to slash the massive debt load that crippled its economy. Amid a series of social media posts criticizing the costly proceedings, including about $2 billion incurred on lawyers and advisers, the Trump administration fired five of the seven members of the board that oversees the territory’s finances.

Loomer didn’t influence the White House’s decision, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. But her screeds against the group have helped push the obscure world of municipal-debt restructuring into the national spotlight. She even singled out a long-time muni fixer, former Citigroup Inc. banker David Brownstein and lawyers working on the process.

Her rhetoric and the board overhaul threaten to further complicate efforts to resolve $10 billion of debt owed by the island’s struggling power utility, a complex fight between hedge funds, muni mutual funds and the commonwealth.

“I’ve seen others describe what has been going on in Puerto Rico with their Bankruptcy process as ‘piracy,’ and I couldn’t agree more. What has been happening should be illegal,” she said on X on Aug. 2. Weeks earlier, she accused bureaucrats of taking billions from the people of Puerto Rico.

Loomer did not respond to requests for comment. Emails viewed by Bloomberg cited the board’s salaries and decisions made by the group for prolonging the bankruptcy as reasons for the terminations on Aug. 1, a day before Loomer’s latest attack on the board.

Regardless of what prompted the move, the firings angered Democratic lawmakers and left bondholders puzzled about what comes next.

While Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez of New York said that she had “serious and longstanding” concerns about the fiscal board, the president’s action isn’t the answer.

“This sudden purge by Donald Trump is not about justice or reform,” she said in a statement, noting that it doesn’t dismantle the board or change the law that created it known as PROMESA. “It simply creates an opening to stack the Board with even more extreme, pro-bondholder appointees who will continue to put the needs of hedge funds over the Puerto Rican people.”

The board has overseen the most expensive municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, incurring roughly $2 billion in fees and expenses over almost a decade, according to a report from Puerto Rican think tank Espacios Abiertos.

It has saved $72 billion in lower debt costs and reduced spending under the leadership of former board chair David Skeel, a bankruptcy and corporate law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and his successor, former bankruptcy judge Arthur Gonzalez, one of the five terminated by the White House.

The board has completed a dozen restructurings, cutting $63 billion of debt by almost 60% and eliminating more than $55 billion in principal and interest payments. Its biggest outstanding missive is the restructuring of debt issued by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or Prepa.

The government-owned power utility has been in bankruptcy since 2017. The board is seeking to cut Prepa’s total obligations of $10 billion — including nearly $9 billion of bonds and loans — down to $2.6 billion of new debt. But GoldenTree Asset Management and an ad hoc group of bondholders and insurance firms want more. In January they asked the island’s Energy Bureau to consider Prepa’s debt liability at $12 billion as part of its rate review, but also acknowledged the bankruptcy process may reduce that amount.

A spokesperson for GoldenTree didn’t respond to an email and telephone message seeking comment. A spokesperson for Prepa bondholders and insurance companies who are contesting the debt restructuring plan declined to comment.

‘La Junta’

The oversight board, known in Spanish as “la Junta,” is often the target of the island’s ire, as its unelected officials wield sweeping powers. The board can veto budgets and contracts, and local lawmakers bristle at its ability to mold policy by killing unfunded legislation.

In a U.S. territory where residents have a limited voice in Congress, the board is seen as an affront. “It has been imposed on us due to our status as a colony,” Governor Jenniffer Gonzalez told Congress recently.

But even some of its biggest detractors acknowledge that it has become a buffer against Wall Street creditors, who have been pushing the government to raise electricity rates to cover bondholder payments.

“The board has never been seen favorably on the island,” said Juan Jose Jimenez, the spokesperson for No Mas Aumentos, a coalition that’s opposing higher rates. “But for better or worse, when it comes to the Prepa restructuring, it’s the board that’s standing up against these bondholders and vulture funds.”

Now Jimenez fears the Trump administration will pack the board with people who favor creditors, and aren’t worried about saddling the island’s 3.2 million people with unsustainable energy bills.

“If this restructuring is not done appropriately, then all of the work that the board has done so far could be lost,” he said.

July hearing

Loomer’s social media postings on Puerto Rico popped up after a July subcommittee hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives that featured testimony from Robert F. Mujica, the oversight board’s executive director.

At that hearing, Democrats including New York’s Ritchie Torres, warned about a board overhaul that would be more favorable to investors.

This is an “attempt to rob the people of Puerto Rico in order to placate an implacable bondholder,” Torres said in an interview. He said he fears that a Trump-appointed board would “finalize a deal that is golden for GoldenTree, but not so golden for the people in Puerto Rico.”

The board has reached an agreement with investors holding about 44% of Prepa’s debt and is in court-ordered mediation with the hold outs, including GoldenTree, Mujica said at the hearing. Mujica, a former New York budget director, was born to Puerto Rican parents. He said what the remaining investors are asking for is unaffordable to residents.

Puerto Rico has some of the highest priced and least reliable energy of any U.S. jurisdiction, and blackouts are common. A board that is more favorable to investors could mean a higher burden on rate-payers.

“Trump is seemingly handing these wealthy bondholders the win,” said Jared Huffman, a California Democrat. He alleged the firing of the board members clears the way to “lock Puerto Rico into an unreliable grid, dirty energy infrastructure, soaring energy costs, and decades of pollution.”

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(With assistance from Laura Nahmias, Alicia Diaz and Irene García Pérez.)

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