Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin said Thursday he regrets reported ethical lapses stemming from a 2017 European trip to a conference in London, and that he’s taking steps to reimburse the government for associated costs.
“This is a big deal, getting the resources right for our veterans. I do regret the decisions that have been made that have taken the focus off of that important work,” Mr. Shulkin said at a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on President Trump’s 2019 budget plan.
An investigation into the $122,000 trip revealed “serious derelictions” by VA personnel, according to an inspector general’s report released Wednesday.
“To keep the attention focused on the important things … I’ve made the decision to reimburse the Treasury to follow the IG recommendations and I’m committed to doing what we have to do to focus on veterans and make things better,” he said.
Mr. Shulkin did defend the trip as “essential travel,” saying if the U.S. didn’t participate in the veterans mental health conference with “Five Eyes” allies Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom, the event would likely end.
“We have had this conference for 43 straight years. It has been attended by every VA secretary,” he said, saying he had planned on going to it for a year and a half.
“I do recognize the optics of this are not good,” he said. “I accept responsibility for that. But I do believe it’s important the United States continue its work with its allied countries.”
“It’s not the optics that are not good. It’s the facts that are not good,” replied GOP Rep. Mike Coffman, who had called for Mr. Shulkin’s resignation Wednesday after the report was made public.
Mr. Shulkin, who was nominated by President Trump to head the VA after serving two years in the agency as an under secretary in the Obama administration, later waved aside talk of resigning, and said he has discussed the report’s findings with the president.
“I came here, I left a very good career in the private sector for one reason, and that’s [because] I believe so strongly that our veterans deserve better care,” he told reporters afterward. “I’m going to stay focused on that as long as I’m here to make sure that we’re doing that every day.”
“I’m not going to be distracted by issues like that,” he said.
The report found that the VA chief of staff altered an email to make it seem to ethics staff like Mr. Shulkin would be getting an award in Denmark during part of the trip, thereby qualifying his wife for about $4,000 in airfare at the agency’s expense.
Mr. Shulkin said his wife was invited and approved by the ethics team.
“We followed all the processes. Everything was done proper, but I regret that any of this is a distraction from what we should be doing,” he said afterward.
Rep. Phil Roe, chairman of the committee, said during the hearing that he was “disappointed” in the allegations in the report and that he’s instructed his staff to request additional documentation
He said he believes Mr. Shulkin’s intentions to serve and care for the nation’s veterans are clear.
“With that said, as public officials we’re all expected to be held to a higher standard and be good stewards of tax dollars,” said Mr. Roe, Tennessee Republican.
Rep. Tim Walz, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said he’s prepared to ask the Department of Justice to look into the possible hacking of VA computer systems.
Mr. Shulkin said Thursday that someone, at some point, took over the email account of Vivieca Wright Simpson, the chief of staff.
“We know that somebody has taken over the chief of staff’s email,” he said after the hearing. “We’ve seen that somebody is impersonating her, and we have to fully investigate that to make sure that we [follow] the processes.”
The report also found that Mr. Shulkin improperly accepted Wimbledon tennis tickets from a woman he described as a friend of his wife, Dr. Merle Bari.
But the woman, Victoria Gosling, couldn’t recall Dr. Bari’s first name in a subsequent interview with investigators, who couldn’t identify any evidence of a personal relationship that would allow for an exception to federal ethics rules restricting government officials’ ability to accept gifts, the report said.
The report also said that a VA aide effectively acted as a “personal travel concierge” for the secretary and his wife during non-official parts of the trip.
“We are concerned about everything,” Mr. Shulkin said. “We need this department to be functioning well.”
Mr. Shulkin was on Capitol Hill for a previously-scheduled hearing on Mr. Trump’s 2019 budget request.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.