Tag: Robert Wilkie

Veterans groups demand VA Secretary Wilkie resign after scathing report that he tried to discredit assault victim

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called on Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie to resign Saturday, following a report that he tried to smear a congressional aide who said she was assaulted at a VA hospital.

“The VA Inspector General report makes clear that Secretary Wilkie engaged in an extremely disturbing cover-up campaign of sexual assault against a veteran,” Pelosi said in a statement. “He has lost the trust and confidence to serve, and he must immediately resign.”

The country’s leading veterans groups — including the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America — echoed the call, saying that Wilkie had breached their trust and could no longer effectively lead an agency responsible for the care of 9 million veterans. Continue reading.

Watchdog finds VA Secretary Robert Wilkie questioned the credibility of a House aide who reported a sexual assault at hospital

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Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie and his senior leaders openly questioned the credibility of a House aide who reported a sexual assault at the agency’s flagship hospital in the District, denigrating her and ascribing political motives to her claim, a report released Thursday found.

The tone Wilkie set with his senior staff and reporters influenced the investigation into the veteran’s claim — and led to the agency’s failure to improve an often-hostile environment for women at the D.C. Medical Center, Inspector General Michael Missal found.

And instead of focusing on the hospital contractor who veteran Andrea Goldstein told authorities “bumped his entire body against mine and told me I looked like I needed a smile and a good time,” VA’s senior leaders did the opposite, investigators found, and embarked on a campaign to discredit Goldstein. The contractor did not have credentials to enter the hospital and had been the subject of a previous sexual harassment complaint from a VA employee. Continue reading.

VA chief Wilkie sought to dig up dirt on woman who complained of sexual assault, agency insiders say

Washington Post logoThe Veterans Affairs Department’s inspector general is reviewing a request from a top House leader to investigate allegations that VA Secretary Robert Wilkie sought to dig up dirt on one of the congressman’s aides after she said she was sexually assaulted at VA’s Washington hospital.

The appeal late Friday from House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Takano (D-Calif.) came after he received information from a senior VA official, confirmed by The Washington Post, that Wilkie worked to discredit the credibility of the aide, senior policy adviser Andrea Goldstein.

>Wilkie, who led the Pentagon’s vast personnel and readiness operation before his VA appointment, quietly began inquiring with military officials last fall about Goldstein’s past, according to three people with knowledge of his efforts. That is when Goldstein said a man groped and propositioned her in the main lobby of VA Medical Center in Washington. Continue reading.

VA Secretary Robert Wilkie: Confederate President Jefferson Davis a ‘Martyr to the Lost Cause’

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie reportedly praised Confederate States President Jefferson Davis in a 1995 speech, calling him a “martyr to the Lost Cause” and an “exceptional man in an exceptional age.” According to CNN, Wilkie also said viewing Confederate history through the “lens of slavery” is a “disservice to our ancestors.” “To view our history and the ferocity of the Confederate soldier solely through the lens of slavery and by the slovenly standards of the present is dishonest and a disservice to our ancestors,” Wilkie reportedly said at a U.S. Capitol event hosted by the United Daughters of Confederacy. “We can’t surrender American history to an enforced political orthodoxy dictated to our children by attention-starved politicians, street corner demagogues, and tenured campus radicals.”

CNN reports that the “Lost Cause” theory of the Civil War, which is typically touted by neo-Confederates, denies slavery played a central role in the conflict. More recently, Wilkie attended and spoke at a a Sons of Confederate Veterans event in 2009, CNN reports. Veterans Affairs Press Secretary Curt Cashour told CNN the events Wilkie attended were “were strictly historical in nature” and said the secretary “stopped participating in them once the issue became divisive.”

View the December 7 post on the Daily Beast website.

Trump’s VA pick, once a defender of Confederate symbols, built his career serving polarizing figures

The following article by Paul Sonne and Lisa Rein was posted on the Washington Post website June 26, 2018:

Robert Wilkie, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, will face a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday. Credit: Carlos Barria, Reuters

Robert Wilkie, President Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, is a conservative Washington insider who would bring three decades of military policymaking and a deep list of Capitol Hill connections to a Cabinet post responsible for serving one of the administration’s most crucial constituencies.

But when he appears Wednesday for his Senate confirmation hearing, Wilkie also will draw on a career spent working shoulder to shoulder with polarizing figures in U.S. politics and often defending their most divisive views.

Wilkie, 55, has impeccable credentials: three decades at the center of the country’s most important military policies. The son of an Army artillery commander severely wounded in Vietnam — and a reserve officer in the Air Force himself. A trusted lieutenant of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis with contacts in Congress spanning at least five administrations. Continue reading “Trump’s VA pick, once a defender of Confederate symbols, built his career serving polarizing figures”