Figures, government officials [1] defending each other.
A high-ranking Department of Veterans Affairs official on Tuesday defended the VA’s failure to discipline two employees accused of misconduct, and blamed the outrage over their lenient treatment [2] on “considerable external pressure” by the media and Congress to punish personnel who may not have done anything wrong.
Sloan Gibson, deputy VA secretary, praised a judge’s recent decision to stop the demotions of Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, two VA officials accused of together stealing more than $400,000 in benefits from the government.
The allegations against Graves and Rubens came in a September 2015 inspector general report, which found the two officials had created job openings for themselves in far-away cities and gamed a VA program meant to pay the moving expenses of agency employees.
Photo by _sjg_ [3] [4]