Posted on 02/13/2018 9:04:37 AM PST by buckalfa
Investigators with the Department of Veterans Affairs will release a report accusing VA Secretary David Shulkin, MD, of wrongly accepting Wimbledon tickets and paying for his wife's airfare with taxpayer funds during a European trip last summer, USA Today reports.
Here are five things to know about the allegations.
1. Dr. Shulkin's lawyers deemed the accusations, scheduled to be released this week, unfair and questionable.
"The draft report ignores critical facts, presenting a one-sided version of events that casts aside evidence contradicting your chosen narrative," lawyers Justin Shur, Eric Nitz and Emily Damrau wrote in draft rebuttal obtained by USA Today.
2. In October, VA Inspector General Michael Missal started investigating Dr. Shulkin's 10-day trip to Europe last July, which included meetings with healthcare officials in Denmark and a veterans' issues summit in London. The investigations started after The Washington Post reported Dr. Shulkin and his wife went sightseeing for nearly half of the trip.
3. According to the lawyers' eight-page rebuttal, USA Today inferred VA investigators may question whether the trip qualified as "essential travel" under Dr. Shulkin's recent cost-saving directive; whether the VA should have paid for Dr. Shulkin's wife's airfare; and whether the couple's acceptance of Wimbledon tennis tickets was ethical.
4. Dr. Shulkin's lawyers said Dr. Shulkin and his wife, Merle Bari, MD, paid for the sightseeing, and Dr. Bari's airfare was approved as a taxpayer expense by VA officials.
5. The VA inspector general's office declined USA Today's request for comment Monday.
Nothingburger
Deep State fights back.
And the VA bureaucrats will fight a Veteran to the death over a nickel.
I’m not sure how tennis tickets could be a quid-pro-quo for anything having to do with veterans affairs. Very small potatoes.
Unfounded accusations.
Yep.
Here is the full USA Today article.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/12/va-secretary-david-shulkin-blast-findings-he-improperly-used-taxpayer/330585002/
Why does a US VA Secretary need to travel to Europe for 10 days in the first place? Why are US taxpayers footing the bill for his wife’s travel? Going to Wimbledon?
They say the trip was “immensely valuable” to his work learning about and participating in addressing developing issues facing veterans. They said it is “beyond obvious” that it qualified as “essential travel” and any suggestion otherwise demonstrates a “fundamental lack of understanding of the Secretary’s work and the VA’s mission.”
So he had to travel to Denmark and London to learn about addressing the needs and issues of US veterans?
They said flying home after the meetings in Denmark on July 14 and then flying back for the summit in London July 18 would have cost taxpayers more than their staying in Europe those four days. The sightseeing they did during that time was paid for by Shulkin and his wife, Merle Bari. And they said his wife’s coach airfare to Europe was approved as a taxpayer expense by VA ethics officials, and he had nothing to do with securing that approval.
OK, I get that but was the trip necessary in the first place? And why was it necessary for his wife to accompany him on the US tax payers dime?
Oh and he used a VA employee to arrange their sightseeing excursions.
In addition, they said an aide began planning sightseeing activities voluntarily and not at Shulkin’s direction, and his involvement in daily planning was necessary in any case, given the coordination required for security.
Sure… an aide just took it upon him or herself to plan sightseeing activities. And the Secretary didn’t have the mind to say “no” this is an official business trip?
“In fact, Secretary Shulkin and Dr. Bari were prepared to pay for Dr. Bari’s travel as they always had done previously,” they wrote. “It was only when staff approached the Secretary to suggest Dr. Bari’s travel could be reimbursed that Secretary Shulkin became aware that was a possibility.”
SMH.
I don’t care if this is a Trump appointee. This sort of thing can’t be tolerated.
He accepted a piddling nothing burger of a gift...if this took place at all. I bet Obama’s appointments were taking gifts right and left they never declared. That they absconded with. But the NSA was not spying on them. Ya think? Maybe? Just might be a case of The Deep Swamp State knowing your every move if it appears electronically via phone or your computer communications, especially if you work under The Donald. I am not crazy paranoid but I this is a distinct possibility.
Oh boy, will the MSM drop the Porter/Kelly issue to run with this one, which does NOT involve the Oval Office?
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