[1] Shulkin was the President and chief executive officer of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City.

[27] In April 2017, Shulkin had every VA hospital and clinic begin publicly posting quality data and wait times.

[28] In early July 2017, Shulkin announced that any settlement with an employee will require the approval of the undersecretary, assistant secretary or equivalent senior-level official.

[29] On March 28, 2018, Trump announced on Twitter that Shulkin had been fired[30] and would be replaced by appointee Robert Wilkie in the interim.

[31] Following his dismissal in March 2018, Shulkin highlighted the political pressure from the Trump White House to dismantle VA healthcare and send veterans to the private sector.

In a New York Times editorial, Shulkin warned that "privatization is a political issue aimed at rewarding select people and companies with profits, even if it undermines care for veterans.

[34] Political aides assigned to VA, including John Ullyot, Camilo J. Sandoval and Jake Leinenkugel, battled with Shulkin over the issue and advocated for his removal in an effort to coerce him to support privatization.

[37] In September 2017, The Washington Post reported that Shulkin spent nearly half his time on a July 2017 international trip to Europe—which was paid for by taxpayers—sightseeing and shopping with his wife, Merle Bari.

[39] In February 2018, a report by Michael J. Missal, the Inspector General of Veterans Affairs, concluded that Shulkin's staff had misled both the agency's ethics officials and the public about the nature of the eleven-day trip.

The report also said that Shulkin had inappropriately accepted tickets to Wimbledon worth thousands of dollars and had directed an aide to act as a "personal travel concierge" for the trip.

The Inspector General referred his concerns about the potential criminality of the actions undertaken by Shulkin's chief of staff to the Department of Justice, which declined to prosecute.

[43] The VA Inspector General report found no evidence that Shulkin was ever aware of the actions alleged to have been taken by the Chief of Staff.

Furthermore, an internal VA Committee that reviewed the matter concluded that "there was no indication of fraud, misrepresentation or bad faith", on the part of Shulkin.