WASHINGTON, DC — The House VA Committee has voted to subpoena VA Secretary Denis McDonough to release documents pursuant to an ongoing sexual harassment investigation involving several supervisors in VA’s Office of Resolution Management, Diversity, and Inclusion.
ORMDI is the office tasked with ensuring that VA is a harassment-free workplace. According to committee leaders, the subpoena issued last month comes after months of unresponsiveness from VA, causing complainants to approach legislators.
Subpoenas from the House VA Committee are rare, with the last one occurring in 2016, and require a majority vote by the committee to be issued.
“I do not take this step … lightly,” Chairman Mike Bost (R-IL) announced prior to the committee vote. “However, the horrific nature of the alleged misconduct and the department’s failure to properly and quickly deal with it has led us to this point. Whistleblowers, women who have endured sexual harassment, are stonewalled by VA, so they turn to Congress for something to be done.”
Bost presented a portion of the evidence during the public hearing, redacting the complainants’ names but including the identities of the accused along with selections from several text exchanges. Named in the multiple complaints are ORMDI Chief of Staff Archie Davis and Gary Richardson, an ORMDI regional supervisor.
The text selections presented during the hearing were ones allegedly sent to one of the whistleblowers, including one that began “Good morning Sexy!” and went on to comment on why he was attracted to her.
According to Bost’s presentation, Davis also allegedly promised the whistleblower he would deal with harassment being perpetrated against her by Richardson while committing the same offense himself.
“Some of the text messages are too graphic and frankly disgusting for public display,” Bost said. “But all members of this committee have had a chance to review the material we distributed in full. Further, Gary Richardson within ORMDI has also been at the center of several sexual harassment allegations. Mr. Davis and Mr. Richardson were both detailed to different offices in the VA and are under investigation.”
The whistleblower also spoke about how VA leaders repeatedly ignored complaints against these men, specifically naming Harvey Johnson, ORMDI deputy assistant secretary, and Gina Grosso, VA assistant secretary for human resources, for dereliction of duty. Both Johnson and Grosso have since resigned.
Bost takes credit for many of these personnel shifts, as well as the hastening of VA’s own internal investigation into the complaints. He sent the first letters to McDonough from the committee in September requesting documents pertaining to their investigation. After receiving no response, he sent a follow-up in November, which resulted in a personal call from McDonough. It was after that call that VA reassigned Davis and Richardson.
Four more letters followed over the course of the next two months, including one requesting transcribed interviews with the accused. While VA declined the request for the transcriptions, it did agree to produce other investigation documents.
“[The whistleblower] told us she feared for her job if she did not agree to [Davis’s] advances,” Bost declared. “The evidence against Archie Davis cannot be clearer. VA has agreed to share the evidence of their investigation. And at some vague, unspecific time in the future, they claim they will provide the rest of the information that I’ve asked for repeatedly.”
While it was certain that the resolution to serve the subpoena would pass the Republican-led committee, ranking Democrat Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) spoke against what he saw as a dangerously loose attitude by Bost toward the complainants’ privacy.
“My Republican colleagues insist on misusing these whistleblowers’ stories and trauma to construct a narrative of conspiracy of widespread wrongdoing among the leadership ranks of VA that has simply not been substantiated by facts,” Takano said. “My staff has already had to step in several times to ask the majority staff to avoid releasing sensitive information about the parties involved.”
He noted that Bost had yet to call for an investigation by the VA Office of the Inspector General into VA’s mismanagement of the complaints, and that VA expected to conclude its investigation into the complaints by the end of January, calling into question how useful a subpoena would be other than as political theater.
While Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA), another senior Democrat on the committee, agreed that the subpoena was likely not necessary, she said that, considering her years of spearheading efforts to protect women from abuse in VA, she “cannot in good faith vote negatively against this resolution.”
The resolution passed with Takano as the only nay.