A senior adviser and former acting secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Peter O’Rourke, has resigned under pressure after White House officials were informed he was getting paid to do little to no work, according to the The Washington Post.
Four sources told the Post that before leaving the job on Friday, O’Rourke rarely came to work. White House officials started to express concern about the adviser’s work schedule last week. O’Rourke’s salary at the department was reportedly as high as $161,000.
In an interview with the Post, O’Rourke said he was “available for anything the [VA] secretary asked me to do.” However, he added, “there were times I didn’t have a lot to do.”
O’Rourke has held the senior adviser role since August. Previously, he was the acting secretary of the VA for two months and a former campaign aide for President Trump.
After arriving in July, VA Secretary Robert Wilkie tried to have O’Rourke fired a few times and told White House officials that he would not be able to satisfy the mission of the VA if O’Rourke stayed on.
But O’Rourke had powerful backers in members of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. They’ve come under scrutiny for influencing VA policies, such as the multibillion dollar plan to revamp the electronic health records system.
After VA Secretary David Shulkin was fired in March, O’Rourke maintained frequent contact with the Mar-a-Lago members and took several meetings with them. VA officials reported that O’Rourke helped the men gain influence in the agency.
When Wilkie became secretary, President Trump would not fire O’Rourke. According to two people familiar with the matter, Marvel Entertainment chairman and one of the Mar-a-Lago men O’Rourke met with, Ike Perlmutter, urged Trump to keep O’Rourke on in some role for his loyalty to the administration.
