Robert Wilkie

Robert Leon Wilkie Jr. (born August 2, 1962) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs from 2018 to 2021, during the Trump administration.

He received a J.D. degree from Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans in 1988 and an LL.M. degree in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.

Wilkie served in the United States Navy Reserve; he is currently in the United States Air Force Reserve, where he holds the rank of Colonel.

Wilkie was a longtime Republican congressional staffer.

He began his career on Capitol Hill as counsel to Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and later became legislative director for Representative David Funderburk.

As a top aide to Helms, Wilkie defended the senator's often-polarizing views.

In 1996, Wilkie unsuccessfully sought for the Republican nomination in North Carolina's 7th congressional district.

He was later the executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party at a time Helms was in a contentious reelection fight against Democratic challenger Harvey Gantt.

Wilkie defended a pro-Helms mailer that was criticized as racially charged.

In 1996, Wilkie also criticized Gantt for having "openly courted money from the homosexual community."

Wilkie then returned to Capitol Hill as counsel and advisor on international security affairs to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott from 1997 to 2003.

In that role, Wilkie led negotiations on the post-September 11 authorization for the use of military force and worked to defeat U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

After Lott was ousted as Senate majority leader in 2003 for praising the segregationist presidential campaign of Senator Strom Thurmond in 1948, Wilkie defended Lott's remarks.

From 2003 to 2005, in the George W. Bush administration, Wilkie was special assistant to the President for national security affairs and a senior director of the National Security Council.

He was a senior policy advisor to then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice as well as her successor, Stephen Hadley.

He later moved to the Pentagon, where in 2007, as assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, Wilkie authored a memo outlining guidelines that limited which Defense Department personnel could testify to Congress.

Wilkie memo directed that only highest-ranking officers and presidentially appointed civilians could offer congressional testimony, barring all field-grade officers and enlisted personnel from testifying.

Critics of the guidelines argued that they could impede investigations of the Iraq War, and that the Pentagon had no authority to set such rules.

(The memo did not impact congressional subpoenas, in which Congress can compel any individual to appear).

Wilkie received the Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest civilian award of the Department.

From 2010 to 2015, Wilkie was vice president for strategic programs for CH2M Hill, an engineering company.

According to his official biography, he worked on reform of Britain's Ministry of Defence supply and logistics system.

From 2015 to 2017, Wilkie was a senior advisor to U.S. Senator Thom Tillis.

He was previously Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness during the Trump administration, from November 2017 to July 2018.

A Naval intelligence officer in the Reserve, he was Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs in the administration of President George W. Bush.

Wilkie was born in Frankfurt, West Germany, and attended Salisbury Cathedral School in England, and Reid Ross High School in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

The son of a career Army artillery officer, he grew up in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Wilkie received his B.A. degree from Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

President Trump nominated Wilkie to the post of Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness in July 2017.

The Senate confirmed the nomination by unanimous consent on November 16, 2017.

On March 28, 2018, Trump announced via Twitter that Wilkie would serve as interim Secretary of Veterans Affairs until the Senate confirmed a successor.

President Trump nominated Ronny Jackson to be VA secretary, but on May 18, 2018, after Jackson's nomination was withdrawn, President Trump nominated Wilkie to the position.

On July 23, 2018, Wilkie's nomination as VA secretary was confirmed by the Senate by an 86–9 vote.

He was sworn in on July 30, 2018.

In 2019, after the resignation of Jim Mattis, Wilkie lobbied to the Trump White House for an appointment as Secretary of Defense, but was not chosen by President Trump.

Wilkie worked on the Donald Trump's presidential transition team.

The woman, a U.S. Navy veteran and an aide to the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, made the report in the fall of 2019; prosecutors declined to file sexual assault charges.

Wilkie and his senior staff openly questioned the veterans' account and suggested that her report was politically motivated.

In March 2020, the Trump White House appointed Wilkie to White House Coronavirus Task Force.

The VA Office of Inspector General (IG) determined that Wilkie and his senior staff sought to discredit a woman who reported sexual assaulted by a contractor at the D.C. Medical Center (the flagship VA hospital in Washington, D.C.) and impugn her credibility.