Shulkin Blames Ethics Woes On Campaign By Trump Appointees

By Nathan Guttman March 5, 2018

Veterans Affairs secretary David Shulkin is in hot water over a trip to Europe in which the government picked up the tab for his wife. The rather minor incident ballooned into a major affair after an internal VA report found that Shulkin’s advisers tried to doctor emails in order to hide information about the trip.

Now, according to Axios,Shlkin has find the cause for his troubles: It is the Trump appointees at the VA who are out to get him.

“The VA secretary has been telling anyone who will listen that Trump appointees in his agency are conspiring to undermine him,” Axios reported. Shulkin is now doing his own PR, after loosing trust in the department’s press team, and has said that he plans a purge, backed by the White House.

But senior White House officials were quoted saying that Shulkin’s future is anything but sure and that “a small, little, tiny breeze would push him over the edge.”

Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com or on Twitter @nathanguttman

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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