(Daily Wire) The Department of Veterans Affairs office dedicated to rooting out racism and harassment is itself a “hostile, toxic work environment with a permissive culture of rampant gossiping and innuendo,” where multiple layers of top officials participated in and covered up sexual harassment, an internal agency review concluded.
At one point, a senior manager fired a mid-level manager because both men wanted to sexually harass the same employee. When a complaint was filed, a political appointee sat on it, apparently partly for racial reasons.
The 125-page report paints a shocking portrait of the 400-person diversity office, in which employees spent much of their time filing complaints against each other instead of serving veterans. Employees engaged in “self-aggrandizing,” petty turf wars, and planned wasteful events, including one junket in which nine people travelled to dispense “diversity” training that was supposed to have been done by one person.
Deputy Assistant Secretary Harvey Johnson, the leader of the Office of Resolution Management, Diversity & Inclusion (ORMDI), retired when confronted with evidence of his department’s behavior, as well as allegations that he had swept misconduct “under the rug.”
Archie Davis, the ORMDI Chief of Staff, has been moved to a different office pending discipline after the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP) concluded that he “engaged in misconduct of a sexual nature with a subordinate employee, including while he was in her direct chain of command,” “sexted’ with a different subordinate employee,” covered up allegations against colleague, and a slew of other infractions.
The findings come as the VA has made some of the most bizarre and inflammatory “diversity” moves in the Biden administration — including an attempted ban on the iconic photo that celebrated victory over Japan in World War II, and a new policy that could tamper with medical assessments to deny benefits to white suicidal veterans in the name of racial equity.
ORMDI is tasked with harassment prevention, equal employment opportunity, and diversity and inclusion for the VA, yet “the very office tasked with enforcing” such things itself engaged in wanton harassment and bizarre racism, according to the OAWP report, which was dated January 26 and obtained by The Daily Wire.
A female employee provided OAWP with messages showing that after meeting chief of staff Davis for the first time in early 2023, he began sending her flirtatious texts and copying her on emails in which he bullied subordinates, seemingly to boast of his power and to show what could be in store for her if she did not cooperate.
Western Region Supervisor Gary Richardson was also sexually harassing the same employee. She said that he would hound her on Microsoft Teams with personal chatter as they worked, and that he told her when she was not available, he would stare at her photo “to get my fix.” When she travelled to D.C. for work, he told her he had a “pass” from his wife and pressured her to go out with him.
And on March 2, Davis recommended that Richardson be fired for it, writing that “the predatory electronic messages should be sufficient to present Gary with the option of resignation of retirement in lieu of removal.”
