The Navy quietly demoted Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, after a Defense Department inspector general report found he'd engaged in “inappropriate conduct” when he was the top White House physician for Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, records obtained by NBC News show.
Jackson, who was a rear admiral when he retired from the Navy in 2019, is now listed as a captain, his service record shows.
A spokesperson for the Navy declined to comment on Jackson's rank but said in a statement that the “substantiated allegations in the DoDIG investigation of Rear Adm (lower half) Ronny Jackson are not in keeping with the standards the Navy requires of its leaders and, as such, the Secretary of the Navy took administrative action in July 2022.”
The spokesperson would not elaborate on what the administrative action was. A current defense official and a former U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told The Washington Post, which first reported the demotion, that it was the reduction in rank.
A spokesperson for Jackson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a page on his congressional website, Jackson still refers to himself as "a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral with nearly three decades of military service."
Completed in 2021, the inspector general’s review found that Jackson drank alcohol, made sexual comments to subordinates and took the sedative Ambien while he was working as the White House physician. It also found he mistreated subordinates and “disparaged, belittled, bullied and humiliated them.”
Jackson pushed back against the findings, telling reporters that Democrats were “using this report to repeat and rehash untrue attacks on my integrity” because "I have refused to turn my back on President Trump."
Jackson was first assigned to the White House medical unit in 2006 and ascended to the top post there in the Obama administration. He also hit it off with Trump, whom he effusively praised after he gave him his physical in 2018.
“He has incredibly good genes, and it’s just the way God made him,” Jackson said then, adding he thought Trump could live to be 200 years old if he ate better.
That year, Trump nominated Jackson to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is when the allegations of improper conduct first became public. Jackson later withdrew his name from consideration while insisting he'd done nothing wrong.
“Unfortunately, because of how Washington works, these false allegations have become a distraction for this president and the important issue we must be addressing — how we give the best care to our nation’s heroes,” he said then.
He remained a steadfast Trump ally and was elected to the House in 2020.
