President’s doctor pulls out as VA nominee amid allegations
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s White House physician, Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, withdrew his nomination to serve as secretary of Veterans Affairs on Thursday, citing the “distraction” from a string of what he termed “completely false and fabricated” allegations.
“While I will forever be grateful for the trust and confidence President Trump has placed in me by giving me this opportunity, I am regretfully withdrawing my nomination to be secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs,” Jackson wrote in a statement released by the White House.
The White House said he would remain in his current job, at least for now.
“Adm. Jackson is a doctor in the United States Navy assigned to the White House and is here at work today,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
Nonetheless, the public airing of charges against Jackson could jeopardize his current position.
His case provides another high-profile example of reputation damage done to someone in Trump’s orbit. Other examples include Trump’s former press secretary, Sean Spicer, who became the butt of jokes, and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Jackson served three presidents as a White House doctor and drew high praise from both Trump and former President Barack Obama. But he was an unorthodox pick for the VA job, which requires managing a federal bureaucracy of more than 300,000 employees. He had no previous experience in managing a large staff and had no known positions on the policy issues facing the VA.
That lack of management expertise had led senators in both parties to question the nomination even before a rash of allegations of misconduct became public this week.
Trump, speaking on “Fox & Friends,” blamed Jackson’s withdrawal on obstructionist Democrats angry that his pick for secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, was headed for confirmation. “He’s an admiral, highly respected and a real leader,” Trump said. “He would have done a great job.”
Senators in both parties, however, had decided earlier this week to indefinitely postpone a confirmation hearing for Jackson after a series of witnesses, mostly current and former military personnel, gave troubling accounts of Jackson’s behavior.
On both sides of the political aisle, senators expressed concern about a lack of proper vetting of the nomination by the White House.
Trump picked Jackson in late March after minimal consultation with his staff, and as former colleagues began to come forward in recent days with their accusations, White House officials seemed caught unawares.
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., the senior Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said this week that 23 individuals had contacted the committee with allegations against Jackson that included drunkenness on the job, poor management and overprescribing of drugs. Most of those leveling the charges were current or former military personnel, Senate aides said.
Tester’s staff released a summary of the allegations earlier this week, including accusations that Jackson had dispensed Percocet, a narcotic, inappropriately and that he had gotten drunk and “wrecked a government vehicle” at a goodbye party for a Secret Service member.
Jackson has denied some of the accusations, including the one about wrecking a car. On Thursday, he issued a blanket criticism of his accusers but did not respond to the specifics.
“Going into this process, I expected tough questions about how to best care for our veterans, but I did not expect to have to dignify baseless and anonymous attacks on my character and integrity,” he said.
Trump said he had a replacement candidate in mind: “somebody great … somebody with political capability.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan praised two potential candidates who now serve in the House: Rep. Phil Roe, a Tennessee Republican who chairs the Veterans Affairs Committee, and Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican who held that job before Roe. The current acting VA secretary, Robert Wilkie, may also be a candidate, in part because he’s already been vetted and confirmed as the Defense Department’s personnel chief.