[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) today released the following statement on Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Doug Collins being tapped as interim head of the Office of Government Ethics and the Office of Special Counsel, after President Trump fired each agency’s Senate-confirmed, non-partisan permanent leader.

“Now more than ever, veterans need a leader who puts them first and squarely focuses on fighting for them. Barely one week on the job, Doug Collins should have enough on his plate taking the reins of the largest health care system in the country. Upon his confirmation, he was placed in charge of a Department that serves more than nine million veterans but has been under constant assault from unlawful directives from the White House that blatantly endanger veterans and the life-saving services they have earned. Instead of two-timing veterans, Doug Collins needs to focus on ending the hiring freeze at VA, blocking Elon Musk and DOGE from continuing to access veterans’ private information, and protecting critical programs providing care and benefits to veterans. On top of it being a major conflict of interest for a cabinet secretary to be tasked with oversight of his own position and agency, all three of these roles are too important for one individual to fill. Doug Collins needs to step aside immediately and focus on serving veterans.”

The Office of Government Ethics (OGE) is an independent agency that provides ethics oversight across the executive branch, which includes VA. Among its many responsibilities, the OGE Director is tasked with developing rules and regulations pertaining to conflicts of interests and ethics in the executive branch, as well as monitoring and investigating compliance with public financial disclosure requirements by offices and employees of the executive branch, including VA. OGE was established in the post-Watergate era by the 1978 Ethics in Government Act. Its goal was to bring unity in ethics policies across the executive branch, and to establish a system of financial disclosure for senior officials and officials in positions with an elevated risk for conflict of interest.

The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency of the executive branch which performs oversight of agencies, including VA. Its primary mission is to safeguard the merit system by protecting federal employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices, especially reprisal for whistleblowing. OSC also provides federal employees and contractors an avenue to disclose wrongdoing at an agency; and monitors compliance with the Hatch Act, which prohibits certain political activity of government employees, and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, which protects the employment and reemployment rights of veterans, guardsmen, and reservists. OSC was created in the post-Watergate era by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.