An office in the Department of Veterans Affairs created under President Trump to protect whistleblowers instead mishandled numerous complaints and even retaliated against some of the whistleblowers it was supposed to protect, according to an inspector general’s report released Thursday.
The VA’s Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection, created by presidential order in 2017, referred more than 2,500 complaints in its first year to other VA offices that weren’t always equipped to carry out investigations or protect whistleblowers’ identities, the report found.
Of those cases, at least 51 involved allegations of supervisors retaliating against whistleblowers.
The office’s first executive director, Peter O’Rourke, used his position to suppress claims and retaliate against employees who filed complaints, according to the report. The inspector general found that Mr. O’Rourke also had the appearance of bias in handling certain complaints due to his “personal relationship” with a supervisor, Peter Shelby, with whom he played golf and attended social functions.
From July to November 2017, the report found, the office received four complaints from four people about Mr. Shelby, who then worked as the VA’s assistant secretary for human resources and administration. The allegations included retaliation, harassment, discrimination and creating a hostile work environment.
Mr. Shelby “had influence over matters of importance to Mr. O’Rourke” and his successor, Kirk Nicholas, according to the report.
Mr. O’Rourke appeared to speed up one investigation to a favorable conclusion for his friend, while the whistleblower became the subject of an investigation, the report said. On two other occasions, Mr. O’Rourke allegedly retaliated against whistleblowers, downgrading their jobs.
The report includes an account from a whistleblower who worked in the whistleblower’s office and filed a complaint accusing a senior VA official of interfering in a disciplinary matter. Mr. O’Rourke learned of the complaint and, within a matter of days, downgraded the whistleblower’s responsibilities and tried to block the employee from transferring from the whistleblower’s office to another job within the VA, the report said.
Mr. O’Rourke also “issued a proposed removal action” that the whistleblower was believed to be calculated and timed to prevent the employee from starting a new job. The whistleblower remains at the VA and has a case pending before the Office of Special Counsel.
After rising to the post of acting secretary of the VA, Mr. O’Rourke left the department in 2018 and now serves as executive director of the Florida Republican Party.
The VA for years has been notorious for a culture of whistleblower retaliation.
But some managers say the agency has wrongly cultivated an atmosphere in which some federal workers essentially become full-time whistleblowers instead of carrying out their regular duties.
Mr. Nicholas told the inspector general’s investigators that, from his perspective, some VA employees treat the whistleblower title as “a position description for them.”
“They’ve joined Whistleblowers of America,” Mr. Nicholas said in the report. “They’re in the papers. They can’t seem to let go of it.”
He characterized these employees as people who have “quit working or they decided that their new job was to go find more stuff to whistleblow on … and weren’t performing what they had been hired to do.”
Another former manager in the whisteblower’s office told the inspector general, “[u]nfortunately, some [of] our whistleblowers become career – a legacy of whistleblowers. They believe that’s their only job.”
The whistleblower’s office had a budget of $17.3 million in fiscal 2018.
In its response to the investigation, the VA concurred with all recommendations and said the employees in the whistleblowers’ office are receiving more training. The agency also said the new head of the office will do more to protect whistleblowers’ identities.
In a statement issued Thursday, the VA said the report “largely focuses on [the office’s] operations under previous leaders who no longer work at VA.”
It said under the leadership of Assistant Secretary for Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Tamara Bonzanto, the office “independently identified many of the issues the IG highlighted” and already resolved 10 recommendations. Among them are directly investigating all whistleblower retaliation allegations, increasing the number of investigators to speed up probes, and improving communications with whistleblowers about the status of their cases.
The VA said that since the enactment of the 2017 law authorizing the whistleblower and accountability office, the agency has fired more than 8,630 people.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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