Email exchanges between top officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs show that the agency sought to water down their statement condemning the white nationalist riot in Charlottesville, Va., in August of last year, according to a Wednesday report from the Washington Post.
Workplace race relations expert Georgia Coffey told John Ullyot, who served as the VA’s top communications official, via email that she wanted the department to make a stronger statement against the “repugnant display of hate and bigotry by white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan.” The request came after President Trump controversially said that there were “many sides” at blame in the Charlottesville riot.
Ullyot relayed directions from then-Secretary David Shulkin, who felt “adamant that VA employees keep their personal views on the Charlottesville issue out of official VA communications,” according to VA Press Secretary Curt Cashour.
Ullyot told Coffey that the department could release a statement reiterating the VA’s “strong commitment” to diversity, but he could not authorize a stronger response than the one Shulkin delivered.
Coffey posted her full statement, however, condemning the riots in the VA’s monthly newsletter from the diversity office. The department removed the statement shortly thereafter, and Coffey left the VA a few weeks later.
Shulkin was looped in on all the emails exchanged between Ullyot and Coffey, but he told the Post he did not remember the conversation.
Cashour remarked on this saying, “For former Sec. Shulkin to say that he doesn’t recall that he directed Ullyot to share his directive is belied by the paper trail contradicting his statement. This is more sour grapes from a dismissed doctor.”
Trump fired Shulkin in March.
Current VA Secretary Robert Wilkie, when asked about the Post report at a telehealth event on Thursday, said that he had confidence in the VA’s commitment to diversity.
“When I started, one of the first directives I took was on inclusion and equal opportunity, same thing as when I worked at the Pentagon. I wouldn’t have anyone on the team who wasn’t dedicated to that,” he said.
The VA has been without a permanent head for the Office on Diversity and Inclusion since earlier this year and was at the center of another racial incident in October when a top VA official was found displaying a photo of a prominent Ku Klux Klan member in his office.
