VA Chief May Head Watchdog Office Probing His Own Department

Update: On March 5, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted a request from the Justice Department to remove Hampton Dellinger as special counsel pending DOJ’s appeal of a March 1 district court ruling that allowed him to keep his job. Dellinger decided March 6 to end his legal fight with the Trump administration. The White House fired him on February 7 without citing any basis for his removal, at odds with statutory law.

“My fight to stay on the job was not for me, but rather for the ideal that OSC should be as Congress intended: an independent watchdog and a safe, trustworthy place for whistleblowers to report wrongdoing and be protected from retaliation,” Dellinger said in a statement. “I am grateful to my OSC colleagues. I know first-hand how hard you work, how talented you are, and how devastating it is to have the agency’s independence destroyed.”

Pending the outcome of an ongoing legal battle, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins may soon simultaneously also run a watchdog office where over a quarter of cases come from his own Department of Veterans Affairs employees. The situation could pose a serious conflict of interest for Collins, and it could jeopardize the independence of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC).

The OSC is a crucial watchdog in the government, charged with protecting federal whistleblowers from reprisal and serving as a safe haven for federal employees to disclose corruption and wrongdoing. It also reviews allegations of improper politicization in the federal workplace and some complaints of employment discrimination against service members and veterans. The agency investigates claims, works to obtain settlements for employees who’ve been wronged, and can seek discipline against federal staff who violate federal employment-related laws. 

President Donald Trump has tried to fire the current special counsel, Hampton Dellinger, and have VA Secretary Collins take his place as acting special counsel. Those changes have been ensnarled in the courts. But if Collins does eventually take charge of OSC, there’s a potential conflict: A large percentage of OSC's caseload has come from the Department of Veterans Affairs in recent years — at one point representing “nearly 40%” of the office’s work. In fiscal year 2023 alone, OSC received 1,255 cases of all types involving the VA, most involving whistleblower disclosures or employment-related misconduct claims. OSC currently has about 300 active whistleblower disclosures and prohibited personnel practice cases involving the VA, an OSC spokesperson emailed POGO on Wednesday.

It would be “a major conflict of interest for a cabinet secretary to be tasked with oversight of his own position and agency,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s ranking member, in a statement directed at Collins. The OSC spokesperson said the office has not been in contact with Collins about taking over as acting special counsel. The spokesperson also told POGO, "We are not aware of any past acting Special Counsel who concurrently served as head of another agency.” Neither the VA nor the White House responded to multiple requests for comment.

If Collins takes control of OSC, it could make protecting the identities of confidential VA whistleblowers who go to that watchdog office more challenging. During the first Trump administration, an aide close to the then-VA secretary allegedly sought to learn the identities of VA whistleblowers from a different office that reported directly to the secretary, as POGO revealed in 2020, claims that the VA denied at the time.

“The future of federal employee whistleblowing hangs in the balance,” said attorney Stephen M. Kohn, chairman of the board of the National Whistleblower Center. “If the Special Counsel is not independent, that office will become a trap and the confidentiality of whistleblowers will not be protected.”

Among the whistleblower cases that Collins could oversee is a previously unreported disclosure recently filed with OSC. According to an OSC letter, the whistleblower alleges “gross mismanagement” over many years because one part of the VA has been “improperly withholding” data from the VA’s Center for Minority Veterans, an office working to ensure equal treatment and access to services among veterans of color.

OSC, which Collins does not yet run, has also recently sought to block the removal of a probationary VA employee, who is a disabled U.S. Navy veteran, along with others at different agencies. They were terminated during a sweeping effort by the current administration to reduce the ranks of the federal workforce. OSC claims that these removals, and potentially that of other probationary employees, were improper because legal requirements were bypassed.

On Tuesday, the Merit Systems Protection Board, a government panel that hears federal employment disputes, granted OSC’s request to pause those six terminations, finding that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that each of the six agencies engaged in a prohibited personnel practice.” This is a temporary pause, formally known as a stay, and it lasts 45 days to give OSC time to further investigate.

“Our work is far from done,” said Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, who currently heads OSC, in a statement. “I urge agency leaders to voluntarily and immediately rescind any and every unlawful termination of probationary employees."

Dellinger himself has been in the Trump administration’s crosshairs for weeks, and he has argued in a lawsuit that its effort to terminate him is also illegal. 

A Legal Battle for Control of OSC

Whether Collins will assume the OSC role is now in the hands of a federal judge amid a contentious legal fight that has unfolded in recent weeks. That fight has already gone up to the Supreme Court once, and may be litigated there again. 

Days after his February 7 firing of Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, Trump appointed Collins to replace him as OSC’s acting head. Dellinger sued to keep his job, citing a law that specifies a number of conditions for the special counsel to be terminated — a rare protection for an agency head in the federal government. No reasons were cited when a White House staff member fired Dellinger over email. 

A federal judge blocked Dellinger’s removal through a temporary restraining order that lasted until February 26. After the Justice Department appealed the judge’s order and was rejected, the case reached the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court allowed the judge’s restraining order to stay in place. The case could wind up at the high court yet again to examine whether the law shielding special counsels from removal is constitutional. The case is back down at a lower court level — on Wednesday, the judge extended the restraining order to March 1.

The Justice Department has argued that the law requiring the president to have a reason to remove Dellinger interferes with their power to remove top executive branch officials and is unconstitutional. In the case of the special counsel, Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote that the Justice Department will push the Supreme Court to overrule a nearly 90-year-old precedent that says Congress can pass laws that shield some agency leaders from presidential removal unless certain conditions are met. The law says the president can only remove the special counsel for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” 

Dellinger says there are compelling rationales for insulating his position from removal. “The OSC’s independence protects and assures whistleblowers,” according to a legal brief filed on behalf of Dellinger. This legal independence is important due to the possibility that OSC’s work can anger the heads of agencies, and those disputes “easily can rise to the President’s level,” states another brief filed in favor of Dellinger’s position. (POGO has supported legal protections for the special counsel.)

Whistleblower cases have garnered the attention of — and drawn fury from — the White House in the past.

The cases can also lead to pointed criticisms of agencies from the OSC. Since being confirmed by the Senate last year, Dellinger has levied a harsh assessment of the VA in at least one matter sparked by a whistleblower complaint. One investigation prompted by a whistleblower found roughly $110 million in potential medical co-pay refunds owed to nearly a million veterans. This backlog had been known to VA’s leadership for years but has gone largely unaddressed, and the agency, as of January, still lacks a robust plan to address the issue.  

“Saying you should develop a plan is not a plan," Dellinger said in a January 15, 2025, statement. “I am very concerned with the lack of specificity in the VA’s findings and the absence of any real actions to timely reimburse veterans for money they’re owed.”

A Wide Range of OSC Cases Involve the VA

More whistleblower cases come from the VA to the OSC than from any other agency, according to a federal budget document. There was a noticeable spike in VA cases beginning in 2014. OSC played a high-profile role in exposing problems within a key VA medical oversight office, which led to reforms, as well as obtaining assistance for numerous whistleblowers who faced reprisal and prompting investigations that confirmed whistleblower disclosures of problems across the sprawling department. 

The surge of cases coincided with the 2014 VA waiting list scandal, exposed by VA whistleblowers initially at the Phoenix VA Medical Center, which led to the resignation of then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. The scandal revolved around official VA medical appointment waiting lists concealing the true extent of delays for care at VA medical facilities, according to an inspector general review. OSC obtained settlements for numerous VA whistleblowers at Phoenix who alleged reprisal. The 2014 scandal underscores the political sensitivity of problems at the VA, which can be exposed by insiders. (Disclosure: One of this story’s co-authors, Nick Schwellenbach, worked at OSC from 2014 through 2017.)

VA cases at OSC run the gamut and often involve allegations of health and safety concerns at VA medical facilities, of which there are over 1,000, and problems with VA benefits, although some whistleblowers have made allegations against VA’s senior leaders and political appointees. 

The recent whistleblower disclosure alleging VA data access problems related to VA benefits potentially impacting minorities is a new chapter in a long history. According to a 2023 report by the Government Accountability Office on disability benefits at the VA, from 2010 through 2020, “Non-Hispanic Black veterans had the lowest approval rates among all racial and ethnic groups — 61% versus 75% for White veterans.” 

Echoing the recent whistleblower claim, a VA advisory committee wrote last year that its access to data has repeatedly been impeded. “The VA offers sanitized presentations or topline findings without a) sharing the underlying data, b) offering corrective action to address the underlying inequities, and c) tackling related personnel accountability matters related to the disparities,” the advisory committee wrote.

It’s unclear how the VA may approach these matters, especially in light of Trump’s executive order ending diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs with the purported aim of ending discrimination. Unlike the Biden-era efforts that the executive order explicitly targets, the VA’s Center for Minority Veterans is based in statutory law, passed by Congress in 1994, and cannot be overridden by an executive order.

OSC has sent the whistleblower matter to VA, mandating the department investigate the claims that data regarding disparities is being withheld internally. OSC will play a key role in overseeing the department’s findings, if there are any, such as assessing whether the investigation of the whistleblower’s claims is complete and whether agency recommendations to address any problems identified are reasonable. At the end, OSC generally informs the White House of the investigative findings and recommendations and any criticisms the office and the whistleblower have.

It is far from the only case Collins may soon oversee. One recent whistleblower reprisal case involves a VA employee who faced termination months after disclosing that a manager had been “misdirecting agency-owned medical supplies in violation of various laws, rules, and regulations,” according to OSC.

Over the years, a number of VA whistleblower complaints have alleged improper access to confidential information in VA data systems. Recently, a group of independent and Democratic senators asked Collins “to immediately secure any personal and related information regarding veterans provided by VA or other agencies to Elon Musk and associates” working with the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, whose de facto leader is Musk.

OSC handles a variety of case types, all of which can involve the VA. The office investigates whistleblower disclosures, which involve claims of wrongdoing such as violations of law, gross mismanagement, wasting taxpayer money, or threats to health or safety. If it finds enough merit in those whistleblower disclosures, OSC can require that agencies investigate those claims. 

OSC also examines and directly investigates allegations of prohibited personnel practices in federal employment, including reprisal for blowing the whistle. The office also reviews complaints of violations of the Hatch Act, which ensures “that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation.” Finally, it reviews employment discrimination violations against service members and veterans, such as their ability to return to civilian jobs if they are called up for uniformed service.

The VA has its own separate office called the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP), which has faced criticism for several years, including from POGO. Those concerns include questions regarding its independence from VA’s leadership — concerns that could extend to OSC if Collins takes the helm.

The OSC is a potentially better alternative to OAWP, said Representative Jen Kiggans (R-VA), the chair of the House Veterans’ Affairs oversight subcommittee, in a 2023 congressional hearing. During that hearing, an OSC official testified that “it is imperative that OSC maintain its investigative independence.”

But now that independence could be at risk.