Report: Trump’s office on VA abuse failed
Inspector general details ‘misdeeds,’ shoddy work
WASHINGTON – A special office created by President Donald Trump to investigate potential wrongdoing, hold senior leaders accountable and protect whistleblowers at the Department of Veterans Affairs failed in its most basic mission, an investigation by the VA inspector general found.
In two years, the office removed just one VA executive, conducted shoddy investigations, disrespected whistleblowers and “floundered” in its duty to protect them, according to the inspector general.
In one case, the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection targeted an employee at the request of a senior executive who played golf with the director. In another, an office leader steered contracts worth more than $2 million – 15% of the office’s budget in 2018 – to projects unrelated to the office’s mandate.
“The former leaders of OAWP engaged in misdeeds and missteps that appeared unsupportive of whistleblowers while also failing to meet many of the other important objectives of the Act” that created the office, wrote James Mitchell, who oversees the inspector general’s special reviews.
VA Inspector General Michael Missal said the report “details deficiencies and derelictions in OAWP’s development that have undermined its credibility and ability to achieve its mission
– the impact of which continues to be felt today.”
In a response to the report issued Thursday, the VA said many improvements have been made since a new leader took over the whistleblower office in January. “It’s important to note that this report largely focuses on OAWP’s operations under previous leaders who no longer work at VA,” the agency said in a written statement.
Tamara Bonzanto, an assistant VA secretary and the new head of the office, “independently identified” many issues highlighted in the report and instituted better training for its employees and investigators, among other improvements, the VA said.
Trump established the whistleblower protection office by executive order in April 2017 and signed a law making it permanent two months later. “We are sending a strong message: Those who fail our veterans will be held, for the first time, accountable,” Trump said at the time. And for employees who expose wrongdoing, “we will make sure that they’re protected.”
The office went through a succession of leaders as it received thousands of reports of potential wrongdoing at the agency, which employs 350,000 and includes more than 1,200 medical and other facilities across the country.
The shortfalls “contributed to the failure to consistently conduct investigations that were procedurally sound, accurate, thorough and unbiased,” the inspector general concluded.
The lone executive who was removed under the office’s authority was the director of the Washington, D.C., VA medical center, Brian A. Hawkins. He was fired in 2017 after equipment shortages and other failures jeopardized patients. He was reinstated with back pay earlier this year after a federal court reversed his removal.
The inspector general recommended the office establish written guidelines for investigations and operations, create a process to ensure they are followed, and assure “accuracy, thoroughness, timeliness, (and) fairness.” The VA said in its response that the office plans to have all the improvements in place by the end of the year.