"Inside the Brewing IT
Scandal at VA - Whistleblowers Speak Out"
with Kristen Ruell,
Peter Rizzo, Ken Crandall, Ben Krause
FULL TWO HOURS
HOUR 1
HOUR 2
About our guest Kristen
Ruell
Kristen
Ruell has worked at the department of
Veterans Affairs for 15 years in Veterans
Benefits Administration VBA. Currently she
is a Program Analyst where she and her team
spread the word about available VA benefits.
After blowing the whistle at the department
of Veterans Affairs, she was informed that
her confidential whistleblower
communications and her personal information
is being stored in a VA system of records
that is not secure and the information is
readily available to the people she reported
as a whistleblower. She is here today to
bring awareness to other whistleblowers.
Benjamin
Krause, a prominent veterans rights attorney
and journalist, is the founder of
DisabledVeterans.org , dedicated to
training veterans to secure their benefits.
An esteemed authority on military veteran
policy, his contributions have been featured
in prominent publications like Newsweek and
Bloomberg TV, and he's provided testimony to
Congress on veterans' retraining issues. A
proud disabled US Air Force veteran,
Benjamin utilized the Chapter 31 Veteran
Readiness & Employment benefits to graduate
magna cum laude from the University of
Minnesota Law School. He now leads Krause
Law, PLLC, a firm committed to staunchly
representing veterans in diverse legal
matters nationwide.
Ken
Crandall has a law degree from Temple
University and worked at the VA for three
years before being illegally fired twice
after he whistleblew about mail shredding,
duplicate payments, nepotism, and improper
treatment of employees. He is a Navy Veteran
and plans to spend the rest of his life
fighting for the rights of whistleblowers.
Rizzo is no
stranger to calling out corporate and
governmental misbehavior. He worked for
seven years for the U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs. During his tenure there,
he and a colleague — James Metcalfe,
Director of Western New York National
Cemetery — were critical of the agency’s
re-design of a busy intersection adjacent to
the cemetery. Rizzo was removed from the
project and Metcalfe was silenced as the ill
conceived traffic design was implemented.
Seven days after the intersection reopened
to traffic, two Veterans were brutally
killed there after leaving a funeral service
for a friend and fellow Veteran.
May 5, 2023 By
Geoff Kelly
When the Clover Group — one
of the region’s biggest real estate
development and management firms — reviews
potential building sites for senior citizen
apartment complexes, it pays careful
attention to what its executives call “the
Canadian factor.”
When the firm’s executives talk about
“Canadians,” however, they’re using a code —
for Black people. And those executives know
the company’s leadership isn’t interested in
building housing where there’s a lot of
them.
That’s according to a lawsuit filed today in
federal court by a former Clover employee
who recorded the company’s executives
talking about its use of racial demographics
to determine where they’ll invest —
sometimes in coded language, sometimes
explicitly.
The whistleblower said the company fired him
after six months on the job when he objected
to what he described as the company’s
“racist and illegal practices.”
The
lawsuit alleges that Clover Group
companies and its executives:
“intentionally engaged in illegal
race-based housing discrimination by
refusing to develop housing in or near
Black neighborhoods.”
commented “on the number of ‘Canadians’
or ‘shvartzes’ (a Yiddish racial slur)”
living near a potential building site.
were
warned that their use of racial
demographics as a site-selection
parameter might violate the federal Fair
Housing Act.
fired
the whistleblower “in a blatant and
illegal act of retaliation” after he
refused to participate in the company’s
“illegal race-based housing
discrimination.”
The former
employee, Peter Rizzo, captured audio
recordings of Clover executives discussing
the company’s aversion to developing sites
in communities with a heavy “Canadian”
population.
“Rich’s Canadian factor was the thing I
wasn’t sure he was going to be okay with,”
said Robert Jack, a Clover vice president,
during a Jan. 4 meeting with Rizzo and a
second executive identified in the lawsuit
as Russell Caplin, a land acquisition
manager.
They were discussing a potential
development site near East St. Louis, a city
whose population is more than 96 percent
Black. “Rich” refers to Richard Greenspan,
vice president for operations at Clover, who
has the final say on site selection,
according to the lawsuit.
“There are a ton of Canadians — if I’m using
the term correctly — immediately to the west
in East St. Louis,” Caplin acknowledged.
Here Rizzo, the whistleblower, chimed in:
“What is it about the ‘Canadian factor’ that
drives … our decisions and where we’re
going? How does it affect our business?”
Rizzo asked.
Jack responded: “Man, that’s an
uncomfortable question. I don’t even know
how to answer that, Peter. Rich likes to
stay away from those areas. I don’t know.
It’s … it’s an uncomfortable question. I
don’t know.”
“Yeah,” Rizzo replied. “Have you ever asked
the question?”
“Ask him that question, go ahead. You’ll get
a colorful response,” Jack said. “He just
doesn’t like what it does to the leasing.”
Jack assured Rizzo he did not share
Greenspan’s objections to building in areas
with what Greenspan considered a high
percentage of Black people — any number over
20 percent, according to Rizzo. Another
Clover employee who spoke to Investigative
Post on condition of anonymity said the
company’s unwritten limit was half that.
Jack said he hoped, as Clover expanded its
development activities into Southern states,
the company would “come around a corner on
that” policy.
There followed a brief silence, broken by
Caplin.
“Let’s just all hope we never get deposed on
that,” he said.
(read the full story
Lawsuit: Developer selects sites to avoid
Blacks - Investigative Post : Investigative
Post)
Kristen
Ruell has worked at the department of
Veterans Affairs for 15 years in Veterans
Benefits Administration VBA. Currently she
is a Program Analyst where she and her team
spread the word about available VA benefits.
After blowing the whistle at the department
of Veterans Affairs, she was informed that
her confidential whistleblower
communications and her personal information
is being stored in a VA system of records
that is not secure and the information is
readily available to the people she reported
as a whistleblower. She is here today to
bring awareness to other whistleblowers.
Benjamin
Krause, a prominent veterans rights attorney
and journalist, is the founder of
Ken
Crandall has a law degree from Temple
University and worked at the VA for three
years before being illegally fired twice
after he whistleblew about mail shredding,
duplicate payments, nepotism, and improper
treatment of employees. He is a Navy Veteran
and plans to spend the rest of his life
fighting for the rights of whistleblowers.
