(Washington Insider Magazine) -The State Department agency in charge of investigating complaints of discrimination and harassment secretly concluded its inquiry into claims of racist and sexist behavior by former President Donald Trump’s then-ambassador to the United Kingdom.
The State Department’s Office of Civil Rights found the allegations to have unsubstantiated claims on race, gender, and religion, according to an internal memo sent on Jan. 12, eight days before Trump left office, despite the fact it had been documented in a review by the department’s independent inspector general.
The State Department refused to make a confidential paper public, according to latest news reports. That paper was supplied by a former State Department staffer.
While the independent inspector general suggested in an August 2020 report that the Department conduct a more thorough investigation, the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian affairs declined.
Bureau Claims
The bureau claimed that the ambassador had watched an Office of Civil Rights video on workplace harassment and proposed that, rather than a formal assessment of Johnson’s compliance with Department Equal Employment Opportunity or leadership policies, it would collaborate with all staff, including the ambassador, to provide advice and additional training to raise awareness on these critical issues.
The inspector general welcomed the bureau’s efforts on employee training but said it did not answer requests for an investigation into Johnson’s actions. The IG stated its recommendation for an inquiry into Johnson would remain unresolved until the bureau satisfied its duty to submit a written final judgment on the subject, based on an investigation.
The final, one-paragraph document concerning Johnson, the billionaire owner of the New York Jets and a close friend of Trump’s, is dated Jan. 12 and tagged “sensitive but unclassified.”
It was sent to Brian Bulatao, a political appointee to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Undersecretary of State for Management and appears to bare Bulatao’s signature.
