Rep. Ronny Jackson had ‘bloodshot eyes’ on a presidential trip to Manila where he had multiple drinks, spoke about the anatomy of female subordinates – and wanted to be filmed in his hotel room dining on a local street food of fertilized bird eggs.
The shocking behavior comes in an inspector general’s report of the former presidential physician who Donald Trump nominated to lead the Veterans’ Affairs Department.
Instead, Jackson got elected to Congress as a pro-Trump lawmakers from Texas.
Jackson ‘made a comment about a female medical subordinate’s breasts and buttocks during a presidential trip to Asia in April 2014,’ according to the report, which goes on to recount the incident in startling detail.
The Navy rear admiral ‘knocked on the same female subordinate’s door, while drunk, in the middle of the night and told her “I need you.”
‘I need you to come to my room’ the report says he told her.
Before arriving in the Philippines, he told a medical subordinate a female subordinate ‘had “great tits,” and “what a nice ass,” according to the report.
Jackson told a witness ‘that he would “like to see more of her tattoos.”
Conduct in the report shows Jackson drinking and seeking to party with subordinates, while acting in a way that made them feel uncomfortable.
One witness recalled seeing Jackson drinking in the hotel lobby almost immediately after arriving in Manila.
He then allegedly got in a car with a drink in his hand ‘to go out on the town.’
A witness saw him at a restaurant later that night.
‘You could smell alcohol. You can see his [RDML Jackson’s] flush face, his red nose. It was clear he had been drinking [before meeting at the restaurant],’ said the witness.
‘So if it was a scale of 1 to 5 like I’d put him at a 3ish. He had a buzz, but he was still functional. He wasn’t so drunk he couldn’t get in the car or something like that.’
Witnesses ‘observed RDML Jackson drink four to six alcoholic beverages in addition to what he already consumed before arriving,’ according to the report.
Although Jackson blasted the report in a statement, he did not respond to reporters in the Capitol today upon its release.
In the report, the watchdog says four witnesses recounted Jackson making inappropriate comments about a more junior female medical staffer while they were on a presidential trip to Manila from April 22 to April 29 2014.
Then the trip took an odd culinary turn.
Jackson and two witnesses ‘returned to their hotel where RDML Jackson and Manila Witness 1 planned to eat balut in RDML Jackson’s room. The report explains that ‘balut is a fertilized bird egg that is incubated for a period of 14 to 21 days depending on the local culture, and then boiled or steamed. The contents are eaten directly from the shell.’
A witness ‘told us RDML Jackson woke her up during the middle of the night with a “loud banging on my door.”
She said that when she opened her door, she smelled alcohol on RDML Jackson’s breath and believed he was “visibly intoxicated.”
She said he was ‘kind of like leaning with one arm against the railing of my doorway, and … he had kind of bloodshot eyes. You could smell the alcohol on his breath, and he leaned into my room and he said, “I need you.”
The aide said it made her very uncomfortable.
Jackson proceeded to cajole two witnesses into his room.
‘Dr. Jackson was in [the room] holding this … grocery bag of … balut. He said, “Take my phone. Take my phone. We need to take pictures. I want to film this. I want to film myself eating these eggs.” And he’s screaming. I kind of describe this is like frat boy type behavior,’ said one of them.
‘The female subordinate told us RDML Jackson started to eat the balut and screamed, “It f**king stinks. I can feel its f**king feathers.”’
At that point, the female subordinate looked at witness one and thought, ‘I’m done,’ she said.
‘This is not where I want to be. I don’t know what this man [RDML Jackson] was coming to my room for in the first place, but this is clearly not related to my job. I’m going.” She stated that she grabbed her medical bag and, as she was leaving the room, a Secret Service agent told her he thought RDML Jackson was going to wake the President.’
The report also concluded there were at least two incidents where Jackson was drinking alcohol while on duty.
The ex-White House physician, who served under both Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, allegedly made ‘sexual and denigrating’ comments about a female colleague and her breasts and buttocks while on a trip to Asia back in April 2014.
Former colleagues also claim he broke protocol by drinking on at least two separate presidential trips and that he also took Ambien, a strong prescription drug used to treat insomnia that leaves the user drowsy.
The accusations are the culmination of a years-long investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general into Jackson based on interviews with 78 witnesses and a review of White House documents.
The blistering report also describes a working culture created by Jackson ‘where fear and intimidation were kind of the hallmarks of him, his command, and control of his subordinates.’
It marks the latest time Jackson’s professionalism has been called into question after allegations first surfaced in 2018 that he was often drunk on duty and once hammered on the hotel door of a female colleague’s room late at night while drunk.
Jackson slammed the report calling the allegations ‘false and fabricated’ and denied ever drinking alcohol while on duty as the White House doctor.
On a separate trip to Bariloche, Argentina, in 2016, two witnesses claimed Jackson was drinking beer while a third said they latter smelled alcohol on him.
Under White House protocol, the physician in charge of medical care during a presidential trip is banned from drinking alcohol from 24 hours before the trip, and until two hours after.
Jackson, who once claimed Trump could live to 200 years old, viewed the rules as ‘ridiculous’, the report says.
The watchdog also concluded that Jackson’s use of sleeping medication raised concerns about his ability to provide medical care to the president and other top officials.
The report also casts an unfavorable light on Jackson’s treatment of staff, with 38 of 60 witnesses interviewed about his command climate saying he was unprofessional and treated his subordinates poorly and intimidated them.
Both staff under Obama and Trump described Jackson as having a bad temper and often being seen ‘yelling, screaming, cursing, or belittling subordinates’, the report says.
‘Many of these witnesses described RDML Jackson’s behavior with words and phrases such as ‘meltdowns,’ ‘yells’ for no reason,’ ‘rages,’ ‘tantrums,’ ‘lashes out,’ and ‘aggressive,” the report says.
‘These witnesses also described RDML Jackson’s leadership style with terms such as ‘tyrant,’ ‘dictator,’ ‘control freak,’ ‘hallmarks of fear and intimidation,’ ‘crappy manager,’ and ‘not a leader at all.”
Investigators highlighted some of the numerous bad comments about them, including: ‘worst command climate I have ever experienced …enlisted [medics] were scared of him … wanted to be the most favorite guy to the President … we were all walking on eggshells … people below him were afraid, did not want to come to work … people avoided him at all cost.’
The physician ‘established a workplace where fear and intimidation were kind of the hallmarks of him, his command, and control of his subordinates,’ one person said in the report.
Jackson hit back at the report Tuesday saying it was a political move by the Democrats to ‘repeat and rehash untrue attacks on my integrity’ because of his vocal support for Trump.
The Pentagon watchdog first launched its investigation into Jackson back in 2018.
It said the investigation was hampered by the Trump administration which insisted interviews with White House Medical Unit staff could only be conducted in the presence of White House counsel.
This had a ‘potential chilling effect’ on the probe and investigators halted the interviews from October 2018 to August 2019.
Jackson was nominated by Trump to serve as the Secretary of Veteran Affairs in 2018 – a nomination he later stood down from amid a flurry of allegations from colleagues about drunken behavior.
Several colleagues came forward saying he was often drunk on duty, was nicknamed the ‘candyman’ because of the way he handed out drugs and that he once hammered on the hotel door of a female colleague’s room late at night while drunk.
In one alleged incident, Jackson reportedly got so drunk at a Secret Service party that he got behind the wheel of a government car and crashed it.
Jackson denied the accusations.