“Three members of a private club with connections to the president may have influenced decisions at the Department of Veterans Affairs, an independent government watchdog reports.”
“The Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Wednesday released a report detailing an investigation of what, if any, influence Dr. Bruce Moskowitz, Marc Sherman and Isaac Perlmutter, members of the club at President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla. resort, had at VA. The men are sometimes referred to collectively as the ‘Mar-a-Lago crowd.’ None of the men had experience in the U.S. military or in government.”
“Perlmutter is a billionaire and Marvel Entertainment chairman. Moskowitz is a physician and Sherman is an attorney.”
“The GAO, through a review of emails and other records and interviews with current and former VA officials and the men themselves, found that the three men communicated with VA frequently — as often as every day from late 2016 through mid-2018 — particularly about:
- VA’s contract for an electronic health records system which was awarded to Cerner. That project totals about $16 billion and has been delayed repeatedly by VA;
- Mobile app development in partnership with Apple;
- Suicide prevention campaigns;
- A medical device registry summit VA eventually held;
- Personnel decisions, including senior executives such as Undersecretary for Health and Chief Information Officer.”
“The men emailed, called or visited VA officials and VA officials took trips to Palm Beach, Fla. to meet with the men, according to the report. The emails were initiated by both the men and VA officials themselves, the report said.”
“But VA officials were split on whether the men’s influence definitively swayed any of the department’s decisions…” Read the full article here.
Source: ‘Mar-a-Lago Crowd’ May Have Influenced VA Decisions: Report – By Abbie Bennett, June 3, 2020. Connecting Vets.
