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      Ronny Jackson Harassed Staff as White House Doctor, Watchdog Says

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCongressman Harassed Staff and Got Drunk as White House Doctor, Watchdog SaysRonny Jackson, a Republican who enthused that President Donald J. Trump had “incredible genes,” sexually harassed a woman on a White House trip and had “meltdowns” with his staff, a report found.Investigators found that Representative Ronny Jackson, Republican of Texas and the former White House physician, created a hostile work environment and engaged in inappropriate behavior.Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesCatie Edmondson and March 3, 2021, 7:17 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Ronny Jackson, the White House doctor who rhapsodized about Donald J. Trump’s “incredible genes” and went on to win a Texas congressional seat with the former president’s help, cursed and belittled his subordinates, drank and took sleeping pills on the job, and sexually harassed a woman, according to a detailed report released Wednesday by the Pentagon’s inspector general.Dr. Jackson, a rear admiral in the Navy when he served as White House physician, became infamous for his rosy assessment of Mr. Trump’s “excellent health” in early 2018, when he said that had the commander in chief, 71 at the time, simply adhered to a better diet over the previous two decades, he could have lived to be 200.His effusive praise of Mr. Trump later helped win him a nomination to become the secretary of veterans affairs. But Mr. Trump abandoned the nomination several weeks later after numerous news accounts reported that Dr. Jackson was a bully to his staff, kept sloppy medical records, drank too much and loosely dispensed strong drugs on Air Force One and in the White House to curry favor with top officials.With the endorsement of Mr. Trump, who tweeted that “Ronny is strong on Crime and Borders, GREAT for our Military and Vets,” Dr. Jackson went on to win a Republican primary in Texas and was elected to Congress in 2020.On Wednesday, Dr. Jackson vehemently disputed the findings of the report. In a statement released by his congressional office, he accused the Pentagon’s investigators, who are nonpartisan, of seeking to punish him for his support of Mr. Trump.The searing report, which came after a nearly three-year investigation started by Glenn A. Fine, the acting inspector general for the Defense Department at the time, went further than previous news reports. It concluded that “Jackson’s overall course of conduct toward subordinates disparaged, belittled, bullied and humiliated them,” and documented instances in which Dr. Jackson was drunk or under the influence of a powerful sleeping drug while he was responsible for the president’s health and safety.The report also detailed evidence of what it said was Dr. Jackson’s harassment of a woman he worked with in the medical unit. In 2014, before a presidential trip to Manila as the physician for President Barack Obama, the report said Dr. Jackson told a male subordinate that he thought a female medical professional they were working with had a nice body, using coarse and demeaning language, and said he would “like to see more of her tattoos.”While in Manila, witnesses said, Dr. Jackson went out for a night of drinking. After he came back to the hotel where the medical team was staying, they said, he began yelling and pounding on the female subordinate’s hotel room door between 1 and 2 a.m. while “visibly intoxicated.” Witnesses said he created so much noise they worried it would wake Mr. Obama.“He had kind of bloodshot eyes,” the woman recalled to investigators. “You could smell the alcohol on his breath, and he leaned into my room and he said, ‘I need you.’ I felt really uncomfortable.”“When a drunk man comes to your room and they say, ‘I need you,’ your mind goes to the worst,” she said.The report, first described by CNN, painted a picture of a physician who engaged in reckless and sometimes threatening behavior that created a toxic environment for subordinates. Nearly all of the 60 witnesses interviewed by investigators described Dr. Jackson’s “screaming, cursing” behavior and his “yelling, screeching, rage, tantrums and meltdowns” when dealing with subordinates.Investigators found that Dr. Jackson also engaged in inappropriate behavior on trips abroad with Mr. Trump.In Argentina, a witness recalled that Dr. Jackson “smelled of alcohol” as he assumed his duties as the primary physician on the trip, and that the doctor had a beer a few hours before going on duty, in defiance of a policy prohibiting White House medical personnel from drinking on presidential trips. Dr. Jackson had previously recounted to witnesses that he found that rule to be “ridiculous,” investigators said.Former subordinates interviewed by investigators raised concerns that Dr. Jackson took Ambien, a sleep-aid medication, to help him sleep during long overseas travel. Though it appears Dr. Jackson never was called upon to provide medical care after he had taken the drug, his subordinates worried that it could have left him incapacitated and unable to perform his duties.In his statement, Dr. Jackson accused the inspector general of resurrecting “false allegations” because “I have refused to turn my back on President Trump.”“I flat-out reject any allegation that I consumed alcohol while on duty,” Dr. Jackson said. “I also categorically deny any implication that I was in any way sexually inappropriate at work, outside of work or anywhere with any member of my staff or anyone else. That is not me, and what is alleged did not happen.”In a fact sheet also provided to reporters, Dr. Jackson’s office noted that Mr. Obama had promoted him to rear admiral “after the alleged events” outlined in the report, and had profusely praised him for his work.A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not reply to requests for comment on the report.Former Obama administration officials declined to comment Wednesday on the report or Dr. Jackson’s behavior while he served as White House physician. In 2018, several aides to Mr. Obama said they were surprised by the revelations about Dr. Jackson.Former White House officials said at the time that they had heard rumors about Dr. Jackson drinking, though all of them said they never saw him drunk on the job. But many said Dr. Jackson earned the nicknames “Candyman” and “Dr. Feelgood” for dispensing sleeping pills, muscle relaxants and other drugs with ease.“I didn’t see any of the alleged behaviors,” David Axelrod, who served as Mr. Obama’s senior adviser from 2009 to 2011, said in spring 2018. “My experience was consistently positive.”But the Pentagon report is unsparing in its details.Investigators were told that Dr. Jackson “yelled and cursed over the telephone at a medical subordinate while the subordinate was dealing with a medical emergency in Africa.” During a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, where Mr. Obama often vacationed, Dr. Jackson “cursed at subordinates for failing to purchase a specific type of bug spray,” the report said.“He would rage all the time,” one person is quoted anonymously in the report as saying about Dr. Jackson. “Screeching, red in the face, bug-eyed, sweating, ears red, jaw clenched. I mean I’m talking rage, and I’m a clinician. I’m a board-certified physician. Rage.”Investigators for the inspector general’s office said in the report that officials in Mr. Trump’s White House tried to stonewall the investigation, instructing Dr. Jackson not to answer any questions about his time as White House physician and insisting on having White House lawyers sit in on interviews with anyone who was employed by the administration at the time.“We determined that the potential chilling effect of their presence would prevent us from receiving accurate testimony,” investigators wrote in the report. Despite that, they wrote that interviews with former employees of the medical unit “and the documents we could access” were “sufficient to determine the facts and reach conclusions regarding these allegations based on a preponderance of available evidence.”In April 2020, Mr. Trump pushed out Mr. Fine as he purged a number of inspectors general with whom he disagreed. A person familiar with the incident said the investigation into Dr. Jackson played a role in Mr. Fine’s dismissal.Investigators were unable to corroborate accusations in 2018 by Senate Democrats that Dr. Jackson crashed a government vehicle after becoming intoxicated at a going-away party for a Secret Service agent. Dr. Jackson has consistently denied that he was ever involved in any accident involving alcohol, and the report said that “no information or witness testimony supported the allegation.”Jennifer Steinhauer More

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      Watchdogs Appointed by Trump Pose Dilemma for Biden

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWatchdogs Appointed by Trump Pose Dilemma for BidenRemoving inspectors general installed by the former president under a political cloud could have the consequence of further eroding good-government norms.Only one Democrat in the Senate voted to confirm Brian D. Miller, who had been a White House lawyer for President Donald J. Trump, as an inspector general hunting for abuses in pandemic spending.Credit…Pool photo by Salwan GeorgesFeb. 1, 2021Updated 8:08 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Even as the Biden administration has moved aggressively to undo Donald J. Trump’s policies and dislodge his loyalists from positions on boards and civil-service jobs, it has hesitated on a related choice: whether to remove two inspectors general appointed by Mr. Trump under a storm of partisan controversy.At issue is whether the new administration will keep Eric Soskin, who was confirmed as the Transportation Department’s inspector general in December, and Brian D. Miller, a former Trump White House lawyer who was named earlier in 2020 to hunt for abuses in pandemic spending.Both were confirmed over intense Democratic opposition after Mr. Trump fired or demoted a number of inspectors general last year, saying he had been treated “very unfairly” by them.By ousting or sidelining inspectors general who were seen as investigating his administration aggressively, Mr. Trump set off a partisan backlash that undercut a tradition under which nearly all inspectors general since Congress created the independent anti-corruption watchdog positions in 1978 were confirmed unanimously or by voice vote without recorded opposition.The Biden team wants to repair what it sees as damage to the government wrought by Mr. Trump through his many violations of norms. It also wants to restore and reinforce those norms, according to people briefed on its internal deliberations about inspectors general dating back to the campaign and transition.But in the case of inspectors general like Mr. Soskin, those two goals are seen as conflicting, those people said. To remove him would itself be another violation of the norm of respecting such officials’ independence and not firing them without a specific cause, like misconduct.“It’s very possible — and it would be a real mistake — for the Biden people to remove those I.G.’s because they were appointed by Trump,” said Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a government watchdog group. “That would be essentially exacerbating the problems he created in the first place.”Ms. Brian in December was one of the few outside observers to call attention to a little-noticed push by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, then the majority leader, to get Mr. Soskin confirmed as the Transportation Department inspector general. The 48-to-47 vote to confirm Mr. Soskin made him the first such official to take office on a purely party-line clash.The office Mr. Soskin now controls has been investigating whether Mr. Trump’s Transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, improperly steered grants to Kentucky as her husband, Mr. McConnell, was seeking re-election there. During the lame-duck session, Mr. McConnell used his power to prioritize getting Mr. Soskin confirmed over four other inspector general nominees who had been waiting for floor votes longer, raising the question of why he was trying to ensure that a Republican appointee would control that post even after Mr. Biden took office.“Hmm why would Majority Leader McConnell be pushing this nomination for Dept of Transportation IG today?” Ms. Brian wrote on Twitter on Dec. 18, a day after he filed a so-called cloture motion to end debate and hold an up-or-down vote on Mr. Soskin. “Perhaps it has something to do with the allegation of wrongdoing that office is reportedly handling against his wife, the Sec of Transportation?”Elaine Chao, then the transportation secretary, and her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell, in the Capitol last month.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMr. McConnell had on the same day also filed a cloture motion for a second inspector nominee, but not enough Republicans were in town when the clotures votes were held on Dec. 19 to constitute a majority, and both votes to end debate failed. He then successfully tried again for Mr. Soskin on Dec. 21 and got him confirmed, while abandoning the other nominee without explanation.Earlier in the year, only one Democrat voted to confirm Mr. Miller, who had worked in the Trump White House, with others rejecting him on the grounds that he was seen as too close to the Trump administration to aggressively hunt for waste or fraud in pandemic spending during an election year.Amid competing priorities, the Biden team appears not to have reached any decision about what, if anything, to do about Mr. Soskin and Mr. Miller. In a statement, a White House spokesman, Michael Gwin, extolled the general virtue of keeping politics away from such positions.“President Biden believes strongly in the role of inspectors general in keeping government honest and protecting taxpayer dollars, and he’s committed to protecting their independent role in his administration,” Mr. Gwin said in a statement. “Any politicization of the inspector general community is highly inappropriate and has no place in government.”Scrutiny of Mr. Miller has stemmed partially from the fact that he produced scant public sign of activity in his first eight months on the job.But his office delivered a report to Congress on Monday describing some investigative work, including developing 69 leads about suspected fraud that were referred to law-enforcement partners and opening five new preliminary investigations. A person familiar with his office said he had hired 34 staff members by the end of January.“I try to be bipartisan and nonpartisan — certainly as an inspector general and in everything that I do,” Mr. Miller said in an interview.During Mr. Soskin’s confirmation hearing last summer, he also pledged to do his job impartially. Through a spokesman, he declined to comment about the status of the Chao-McConnell investigation.A spokesman for Mr. McConnell, while not directly responding to a question about whether he prioritized Mr. Soskin because of that inquiry, pointed to a 2019 statement in which Mr. McConnell had made no apology for using his position “to advance Kentucky’s priorities” after Politico reported on arrangements under Ms. Chao favoring grants to Kentucky.At a time when the Senate is narrowly divided and the Biden team is trying to get major legislation passed, ousting Mr. Soskin would most likely anger other Republicans as well — particularly Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, a champion of inspectors general.Mr. Grassley scolded Mr. Trump last year over his failure to articulate a concrete reason for his removal of one such official, Michael Atkinson, who had sought to bring to Congress’s attention the whistle-blower complaint that led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. He also chastised President Barack Obama in 2009 for initially giving little explanation for removing the AmeriCorps inspector general.“It’s hard to imagine how President Biden could have a good reason to fire an I.G. who’s only been on the job less than a month,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement. “If he chooses to fire any I.G., he’d better have a darn good reason to do it, and he’d better notify Congress well in advance, as the law requires. If he doesn’t, he’ll get the same earful from me that Presidents Obama and Trump got.”Mr. Trump nominated Mr. Soskin in May, around the time he was moving against numerous independent inspectors general. The purge included firing some Senate-confirmed officials on the vague basis that he purportedly lacked confidence in them. He also appointed outsiders to serve as new acting heads of offices whose top positions were vacant — layering over the career deputy inspectors general who had been temporarily in control.Mr. Biden sharply criticized the purge at the time during a Yahoo News town hall and pledged to act differently.Some of the targeted officials had attracted Mr. Trump’s personal ire, such as Mr. Atkinson. Others were leading investigations that threatened Trump allies and other Republicans; he removed Steve A. Linick as the State Department’s watchdog, for example, at the request of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was facing several potentially damaging investigations. (A subordinate to Mr. Pompeo later did accuse Mr. Linick of specific misconduct, but an inspector general council investigated and found that the evidence refuted his accusations.)Filling the Transportation Department inspector general post last year had political sensitivities for both Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell, then the two most powerful Republicans in Washington. In 2019, Politico reported that the department’s longtime inspector general, Calvin L. Scovel III, was overseeing an investigation into whether the department under Ms. Chao was improperly favoring grants to Kentucky as her husband sought re-election there.In January 2020, Mr. Scovel retired for health reasons, and his deputy, Mitch Behm, took over as acting head. But in May, Mr. Trump installed a different acting head: Howard Elliott, a political appointee known as Skip who, in an unorthodox arrangement, remained subordinate to Ms. Chao. Mr. Trump also nominated Mr. Soskin, then a Justice Department lawyer, for the role.Under Mr. Elliott’s tenure, the election came and went, and the office issued no report about grants to Kentucky. Mr. McConnell won re-election, but Mr. Trump lost, meaning political appointees like Mr. Elliott were set to leave by the inauguration. Had Mr. McConnell not pushed Mr. Soskin through, the office would have reverted to Mr. Behm’s control until Mr. Biden nominated and the Senate confirmed a new inspector general.Still, Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who co-wrote a book proposing post-Trump reforms to government, said that no matter how well Mr. Biden might couch a justification to remove such an inspector general, it would further damage the notion that presidents ought not remove them without cause.“If Biden refrains from firing Senate-confirmed but disfavored inspectors general, that will buck up the norm of independence,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “The ostensible norm is not an actual norm if it doesn’t constrain the president in painful ways.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Watchdog to Examine Whether Justice Dept. Helped Trump Effort to Overturn Election

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWatchdog to Examine Whether Justice Dept. Helped Trump Effort to Overturn ElectionThe inquiry was announced after revelations about a plot between Donald Trump and a top former department official to promote false claims of voter fraud by replacing the acting attorney general.Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, said he would investigate whether officials aided President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesJan. 25, 2021, 7:28 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Justice Department watchdog announced Monday that he had opened an investigation into whether any of the department’s officials tried to undo the results of the presidential election, as scrutiny of former President Donald J. Trump and his associates builds ahead of his impeachment trial.The investigation by the department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, followed efforts by Mr. Trump and a top federal law enforcement official, Jeffrey Clark, to push other Justice Department leaders to falsely assert that continuing fraud investigations cast doubt on the election results. As detailed by The New York Times in recent days, Mr. Trump was said to have considered installing Mr. Clark as acting attorney general to carry out the scheme.“The inspector general is initiating an investigation into whether any former or current D.O.J. official engaged in an improper attempt to have D.O.J. seek to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election,” Mr. Horowitz said in a statement, adding that he was announcing the inquiry to reassure the public that the matter was being examined.The inquiry adds to the increasing scrutiny on Mr. Trump’s attempts to wield the power of the Justice Department to advance his false claims about the election in the final weeks of his presidency. It follows another inspector general investigation into whether a federal prosecutor in Georgia was improperly pushed to help and a broader Democratic-led Senate inquiry into pressure on the department to aid Mr. Trump’s cause.Mr. Trump sought repeatedly to compel the Justice Department to back his baseless claims of election irregularities, ultimately prompting the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, to publicly state early last month that the department had found no voting fraud on a scale that would affect the election results. Mr. Barr fell out of favor with Mr. Trump over the issue and left his post within weeks.A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.The investigation underscores fears among Senate Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, that if they do not distance themselves from Mr. Trump and undo his grip on the party, a steady drip of negative revelations paired with his own erratic behavior could damage their political fortunes.“If Trump loses credibility because it appears he’s acted in a way that no one can justify, the leverage that he might have over the Republican Party could be diffused,” said William Marshall, a professor at the University of North Carolina who teaches and writes on presidential power. “The more that indicates he behaved improperly makes it less easy to defend him and less easy to stand by him.”Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, had urged Mr. Horowitz over the weekend to open an investigation, saying that it was “unconscionable that a Trump Justice Department leader would conspire to subvert the people’s will.”The inspector general also noted that his inquiry would be limited to the Justice Department because other agencies did not fall within his purview, a nod to the array of people who sought during Mr. Trump’s final weeks in office to find a way to stop the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.This month, Mr. Horowitz opened an investigation into whether Trump administration officials pressured Byung J. Pak, at the time the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, who abruptly resigned after it became clear to Mr. Trump that he would not take actions to cast doubt on or undo the results of the election, according to a person briefed on the inquiry.Separately, the Senate Judiciary Committee said this weekend that it had initiated its own oversight inquiry into officials including Mr. Clark, who was the head of the Justice Department’s environmental and natural resources division and the acting head of its civil division.Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, sent a letter to the Justice Department saying that he would investigate efforts by Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark to use the agency “to further Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.”Jeffrey Clark pushed Justice Department leaders to falsely assert that continuing voter fraud investigations cast doubt on the election results.Credit…Susan Walsh/Associated PressMr. Durbin asked the acting attorney general, Monty Wilkinson, to preserve documents, emails and messages related to meetings between top Justice Department officials under Mr. Trump, the White House and Mr. Trump, as well as any communications related to Mr. Pak’s resignation.Mr. Biden’s win was deemed valid after recounts in Wisconsin and Georgia declared him the victor and after the Trump campaign team was unable to prove widespread fraud in court cases in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Dozens of F.B.I. investigations uncovered no voter fraud on a scale that would have changed the results of the election, according to Justice Department officials briefed on the cases.Dozens of Republicans in Congress were among those who backed Mr. Trump’s false claims, including Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania. On Monday, he confirmed a Times report that he had introduced Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark, giving the president access to the sole top Justice Department official willing to entertain the idea that Mr. Biden had not won the election.Mr. Perry, a member of the pro-Trump, hard-line Freedom Caucus, said in a statement to a Pennsylvania public radio affiliate that he spoke with Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark about election fraud claims.“Throughout the past four years, I worked with Assistant Attorney General Clark on various legislative matters,” Mr. Perry said. “When President Trump asked if I would make an introduction, I obliged.”Allies of Mr. Clark have characterized the conversations as simply laying out the legal options available to Mr. Trump. But Mr. Clark’s former colleagues have said there were no more legal remedies that Mr. Trump could have pursued through the department.Still, their assessment did not stop Mr. Trump from pressuring the Justice Department to fight harder to find a way to help him. When Mr. Barr declined to appoint special counsels to examine voting irregularities or take other measures that would have helped to throw the election results into doubt, he and Mr. Trump agreed that he should leave the department, according to three people familiar with their conversation. Mr. Barr stipulated that the deputy attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, replace him, the people said.Mr. Trump began to push Mr. Rosen to promote baseless suspicions about voting fraud the day after announcing that Mr. Barr would leave and kept up the pressure through the last weeks of December, pushing him to open investigations and to challenge Mr. Biden’s win before the Supreme Court.But as the department’s top officials pushed back, Mr. Trump separately opened a line of communication with Mr. Clark, who seemed more amenable to his theory that he had won the election, according to five people familiar with the matter, asking him to publicize inquiries that could cast doubt on the election.Mr. Trump’s deliberations over whether to replace Mr. Rosen with Mr. Clark also set off a crisis among other senior Justice Department officials, who pledged to quit should Mr. Rosen be fired. The vow was said to have helped persuade Mr. Trump not to act.Mr. Clark has said that this account is inaccurate without specifying further and has said that all of his conduct was legal.While the machinations between Mr. Trump, Mr. Clark and Mr. Perry will not be the focus of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial — which accuses him of inciting the riot at the Capitol — Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, suggested the matter would be presented to senators.“This is powerful motive evidence,” Mr. Swalwell said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More