A new report has placed U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, MD under heavy fire for misusing government funds to cover his wife’s airfare for a European trip and wrongly accepting tickets to Wimbledon. The report revealed that the 11-day trip cost a staggering $122,000 in taxpayer dollars. The amount was also misrepresented to ethics lawyers when VA Secretary returned to the U.S.
It was further reported that Shulkin’s Chief of Staff Viveca Wright Simpson actually administered an official email to procure taxpayer funding for Shulkin’s wife’s airfare that cost more than $4,000. The report said that in doing so, Shulkin may have violated federal criminal statutes.
The OIG has further referred this to the Department of Justice and has asked them to consider it for criminal prosecution. Interestingly, DOJ has declined to prosecute.
The OIG further revealed that Shulkin had also misrepresented the methodology of obtaining the Wimbledon tournament tickets when he was discussing the issue with ethics officials.
It was also reported that three other top-level VA officials and a six-member security team accompanied Shulkin in Europe for a VA conference in London. He also had further plans of visiting other places as well.
Shulkin condemned these findings in a letter that stated, “Your staff’s conduct related to this investigation reeks of an agenda. Your portrayal of this trip is overall and entirely inaccurate… [and] forms an inappropriate judgment regarding what my family chooses to do with our free time on a Saturday afternoon.”
“My wife and I did what millions of people do every day. We went to a sporting event, on our personal time, with a friend. The entire report seeks to question and undermine the validity of the trip and its importance to furthering the work of the VA,” he continued.
