The Department of Veterans Affairs continues to struggle to protect whistleblowers in its ranks, with two-thirds of whistleblowers reporting allegations of retaliation from 2018 to 2022, the Government Accountability Office has found.
Overall, allegations of retaliation against all federal whistleblowers declined from 2018 to 2022, but cases at the VA involving retaliation rose during the time frame, according to a GAO briefing to members of Congress in February that was released Wednesday.
The watchdog agency found that VA cases alleging whistleblower retaliation or other prohibited practices make up more than a third of the workload of the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency that investigates and prosecutes personnel impropriety across the federal government.
The VA has a history of failing employees who report wrongdoing, including firing a clinical psychologist in 2019 the day before she was set to testify before Congress about the department's treatment of whistleblowers.
Dr. Katherine Mitchell, a VA doctor who exposed the 2014 scandal at the Phoenix VA Medical Center over appointment wait times, was allowed to return to work but then faced retaliation.
Jeff Dettbarn, a VA employee who blew the whistle in 2017 on diagnostic exams being canceled at the VA Medical Center in Iowa City, Iowa, without a doctor's order, and testified in...
The Trump administration’s fraud prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center is set for arraignment on Thursday afternoon. Ahead of the scheduled court appearance in Alabama, defense lawyers fo...