A senator who helped scuttle the 2018 nomination of Ronny Jackson to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs says a new report offering extensive details of unprofessional conduct by the former White House physician and now Texas congressman shows why he deserved to be rejected for the Cabinet post.
“I don’t want to re-litigate what happened three years ago, but the truth is, if you read that report, that’s exactly why we did what we did when we did it,” Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday after the release of an inspector general report that found that during his time as the top White House physician, now-Rep. Ronny Jackson drank on the job and made inappropriate comments to staffers.
RONNY JACKSON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PHYSICIAN, DRANK ON DUTY AND HARASSED STAFF DURING TENURE
In April 2018, Jackson withdrew his nomination to be then-President Donald Trump’s secretary of Veterans Affairs after Tester, the top Democrat on the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee and now its chairman, alleged that his office learned that Jackson was accused of getting drunk and crashing a government vehicle following a Secret Service going-away party.
Additionally, Democratic staff on the committee reviewing Jackson’s nomination also reported, based on conversations with 23 of Jackson’s current and former colleagues at the White House Medical Unit, that he distributed such large doses of prescription opioids.
Trump attacked Tester for the allegations, calling them “disgraceful.”
“To say the kind of things that he said — an absolute disgrace,” Trump said at the time.
Trump promised political retribution against Tester. But that November, Tester won a third term in the Senate. Jackson, meanwhile, left the White House and moved back to Texas to run for Congress. He was elected in 2020 in a conservative Texas Panhandle district.
Jackson, in a statement to the Washington Examiner, strongly disputed the findings of the Department of Defense IG report.
“Three years ago I was the subject of a political hit job because I stood with President Trump,” Jackson said. “Today, a Department of Defense Inspector General report has resurrected those same false allegations from my years with the Obama Administration because I have refused to turn my back on President Trump. Democrats are using this report to repeat and rehash untrue attacks on my integrity.”
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When the woman answered the door, Jackson told her, “I need you,” the report said.
Jackson on Wednesday rebutted findings of the Pengaton IG, which is an independent watchdog.
According to the Pentagon report, Jackson, 53, during a 2014 presidential trip to Manila, made denigrating remarks about a female medical subordinate’s breasts and buttocks. Additionally, the report said that on the Philippines trip, he got drunk with lower-level staff members as well as repeatedly knocked on the female subordinate’s hotel room door late at night.
“I’m proud of the work environment I fostered under three different Presidents of both parties; I take my professional responsibility with respect to prescription drug practices seriously; and I flat out reject any allegation that I consumed alcohol while on duty,” 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.”
Jackson is a retired Navy rear admiral and started his White House career during former President George W. Bush’s administration as a physician in the White House Medical Unit. Trump and former President Barack Obama later appointed him to be the physician to the president.
