This post has been updated.
Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) office is is pushing back on accusations that the senator and his staff were slow to respond to information on the VA scandal.
In a story published Tuesday, the Arizona Republic accused McCain and of failing to respond quickly to concerns of Dr. Sam Foote, the whistleblower who first raised concerns about wait times at the Phoenix VA hospital. The newspaper reviewed correspondence between McCain’s office and Foote, and concluded that McCain’s office was “slow to take action.”
According to Foote, he reached out to McCain, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) and the U.S. Attorney’s office in February after he had already been in touch with the the agency watchdog, the inspector general’s office.
Only McCain’s office responded, Foote said. He got an email from Tom McCanna, a McCain aide tasked with veterans issues.
“He (McCanna) took the information, but my impression was he wasn’t going to be moving on it anytime soon,” Foote told the Arizona Republic.
The Arizona Republic has a detailed review of the correspondence between Foote and McCain’s office here.
McCain’s office issued a statement in response to the article on Tuesday, disputing the paper’s characterization of his response to the scandal.
“The Arizona Republic’s article today alleging that Senator McCain’s office was ‘slow to take action’ on a VA whistleblower complaint by Dr. Sam Foote is totally inaccurate, particularly given that our office provided to the Republic documentation showing we responded to Dr. Foote’s letter within 48 hours,” communications director Brian Rogers said in the statement. “Senator McCain greatly appreciates the efforts of Dr. Foote and other whistleblowers who have helped bring to light serious problems in veterans’ care across the nation.”
McCain’s office included a timeline of their correspondence with Foote in the statement.
Kirkpatrick’s chief of staff initially told the Republic that the office did not respond to Foote’s email raising concerns about wait times. The lawmaker’s chief of staff forwarded Foote’s note to the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, according to the Republic.
“The severity of the allegations was clear,” spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson told the Republic. “So we felt it was appropriate for Representative Kirkpatrick’s committee and subcommittee staff to handle any communications with Dr. Foote or anyone else who contacted us about matters under investigation.”
However, Kirkpatrick’s office later found an archived email in which the office did respond to Foote, the Republic reported Wednesday evening.
It’s about goddamned time!!!
Hmmm… February 2014-now where was John McCain?
Oh yeah, on Anderson Cooper’s show explaining why he would support the exchange for Bergdahl:
MCCAIN: Well, at that time the proposal was that they would release – Taliban, some of them really hard-core, particularly five really hard-core Taliban leaders, as a confidence- building measure. Now this idea is for an exchange of prisoners for our American fighting man. I would be inclined to support such a thing depending on a lot of the details.
[…]
COOPER: So if there was some – the possibility of some sort of exchange, that’s something you would support?
MCCAIN: I would support. Obviously I’d have to know the details, but I would support ways of bringing him home and if exchange was one of them I think that would be something I think we should seriously consider.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/06/03/cnn-lets-john-mccain-off-the-hook-for-shifting/199561
no wonder st johnnie the maverick has been dogging obama re bergdahl… anything to distract from st johnnie’s failure to do something about the va’s failure…
Hey! Go easy on the Oldster! He was busy trying to get ti the bottom of Benghazi
BENGHAZI!
It isn’t that McCain was just slow, he was completely uninvolved. How many times did he actually visit the VA facility here and talk to the employees to see what help they could have used? A good leader always does that. It is all talk about supporting the troops. And now, Bergdahl. Failure all around.
GOP trickle-down management theory, like their failed economics experiments, continue to ignore the foundations that makes any structure sound.