When you allow people to retire to escape justice, you give tacit approval for their outrageous misconduct. Retirement is used as a “get out of jail card.” The Secretary of Veterans Affairs is condoning what his subordinates did by not doing anything to hold them accountable. Kimberly “take the money and run” Graves and Dirty Diana Rubens pleaded the Fifth Amendment in a congressional hearing last month, refusing to answer questions about their alleged fraud.
When people plead the 5th Amendment, it does not mean they are necessarily guilty, but did anyone really read the Inspector General’s report regarding the antics of the Kim and Diana show? Pleading the 5th doesn’t mean you’re guilty, and it also doesn’t mean you’re innocent either.
Referred to by some as the dynamic duo of fraud, they were targeted for demotion after the inspector general found they had quite literally stolen $400,000 from the VA. Unfortunately, they were swamp creatures in our government are seldom punished for anything they do. In this case the VA “accidentally” screwed up the paperwork for their demotions, so the demotions never happened. BTW, a mere demotion for such outlandish alleged fraud is softest slap on the wrist anyone could receive.
You see, the VA so seldom punishes anyone for any transgression be it major or minor, they don’t even know how to do the paperwork correctly. Consequently, the dynamic duo of fraud got off Scot free.
VA methods are similar to OSHA tactics. For example; when newspapers blast out headlines that a company was fined millions of dollars for safety violations that lead to the death of several workers; it’s a stall tactic. After the furor over the needless deaths dies down, sometimes years later, OSHA quietly lowers the fine to around a nominal sum. We’ve seen them drop fines in the millions down to a couple thousand dollars. Net result: for a multi-million dollar corporation, it’s no accountability at all.
This same crap happens all the time in the military too. For example: an admiral is fired from his job and busted in rank for raping some enlisted gal. There is a problem with the words we use, because they give a false impression. When you distill down the wording we find the admiral was really not fired at all. There’s a very big difference between being fired and being relieved.
When you get fired you lose a paycheck, when you get relieved, are moved to some cushy job in the Pentagon. The military will put the admiral at a desk while they conjure up a set of retirement papers. In this way, the admirals and generals are quietly ushered out the backdoor. They avoid any real investigation or legal accountability. They are truly a privileged class that are completely above the law.
Dirty Diana Rubens set her retirement for the end of this month, and if Secretary of the VA has any leadership bones in his body, he will fire her before she gets to retire.
Diana Rubens has orchestrated numerous schemes leaving veterans without benefits and her veteran employees without justice. The VA Inspector General issued a report of backlog fraud, that implicated past decisions by the embattled Philadelphia VA Regional Office director.
And, just like in the military, once implicated by a substantive findings in an IG report, they quickly make the decision to quietly head for the door marked “retirement.”
Last week, a fabulous website we recommend as a regular read (DisabledVeterans.org), wrote about Dirty D’s retirement and the curious selling of her dream home. Some of her fans (sic) promised to swing by an open house at her home over the weekend to leave a memento, but otherwise, Dirty Diana Rubens stands to get away with her dirty deeds without any accountability, at all.
That is the cold implication if President Trump fails to treat her as he treated Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and other petulant federal bureaucrats. As for Dirty D, in recent years, her subordinates help disappear 94 boxes of veterans files, hold a seance with a fortune teller (the wife of one of her lieutenants), evade accountability for her cronies, and even created a remote work gig for her girlfriend so she could move with Rubens to Philadelphia.
In 2014, Rubens orchestrated her own demotion so she would round out her career at Philadelphia VA. She received $288,000 in moving incentive bonuses to which she was not actually entitled. Once Congress caught wind, numerous hearings were held in her honor, during which Rubens pled the 5th Amendment privilege to not incriminate herself.
When penalized, VA attorneys failed to appropriately prosecute the punishment, and American taxpayers were not only stuck with the moving bill but also Rubens enormous attorney fees from MSPB.
Four years later, and after Trump implemented his supposed Accountability laws, Rubens was the target of at least one Accountability investigation. She is now implicated in another IG investigation where the agency was caught falsifying numbers concerning disability compensation appeals backlogs.
And again, Dirty Diana Rubens looks set to sail off into the sunset without even a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile, her cronies who helped insulate her from accountability are still collecting paychecks and likely will also be allowed to retire.
So what is all that talk about Accountability, President Trump? When will you actually hold these petulant leaders accountable? Why does he continue to hire and promote people from the swamp, just like that dirty double-crossing VA Secretary Robert Wilkie.
Some of you may even recall how Rubens was the poster child for higher accountability laws. We were told senior VA leadership would be held accountable. Instead, many disabled veterans working at the agency were screwed out of jobs after blowing the whistle concerning fraud, waste, and abuse.
What happened? The Accountability laws created loopholes for corrupt senior leaders to fire subordinates who threatened to rock the boat without detection. That is basically what happened. And, the senior leaders that create policies that hurt veterans are never taken to the woodshed.
Talk about a bait and switch.
It’s just like they say, if you don’t help solve the problem then you are the problem. Does Wilkie have the leadership ability to do the right thing and fire anyone and everyone involved in these fraudulent schemes. Once again, we recall a young Navy lieutenant who was dishonorably discharged for a count of fraternization and improperly submitting a travel claim for $75.51. Justice in the military and in the Veterans Administration is nothing but a joke.
(we recommend that our readers also bookmark DisableVeterans.org)
