The death of Marine Corps veteran Jason Simcakoski, 35, from an overdose as an inpatient at the Tomah VA Medical Center galvanized the national media and uncovered a
scandal that had been brewing for nearly three years. Anonymous reports to lawmakers in the state complained about opiate prescription rates at Tomah and finally, in September of 2105 a whistle-blower at Tomah, Ryan Honl, contacted VA Secretary Robert McDonald and his congressional representatives about his concerns. Enter Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, or actually not. Because Johnson's staff
sat on Honl's tips for months, and then—when the story broke—repeatedly lied to the media and the public about having taken action.
Aides to U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson have stated repeatedly that they referred a whistleblower's complaints about the troubled Tomah VA Medical Center to a U.S. Senate oversight committee last year.
One Johnson staffer told the whistleblower that back in October, and the assertion has been repeated in media reports by another Johnson aide.
But a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat who ran the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Federal Contracting Oversight, said Sunday that the whistleblower complaints never reached her or others in charge of the panel. […]
A Johnson spokeswoman responded Monday that the complaints filed last fall by Ryan Honl, a former Tomah employee, did go from one Johnson aide on his Senate staff to Johnson aides assigned to the subcommittee.
And there the complaints died.
Johnson was the ranking member on McCaskill's oversight committee, and he and his staff did nothing to bring this whistle-blower report to the committee's attention. His personal staff sent the information to the minority committee staff, and there it sat. Meanwhile, Johnson and his staff repeatedly put out the lie that they had passed all the information on to the full committee.
When Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) found out that her local staff had also sat on Honl's complaints, she fired the staffer who blew it. Johnson, in contrast, just let his staff keep lying about it.