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The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has investigated at least two employees of the agency who attended a vigil or spoke to the press regarding the killing of VA nurse Alex Pretti this January by Customs and Border Patrol agents, new reporting finds.
Becky Halioua, a VA recreational therapist and union leader in Augusta, Georgia, told CNN that she has been subject to an internal investigation into whether or not she had violated agency rules in speaking to the press about Pretti.
According to the outlet, three other VA employees have faced probes relating to remarks to the press, including at least one who spoke about Pretti.
The investigation came after Halioua spoke out against the killing of Pretti in an interview at a vigil with a local TV outlet, WRDW. She condemned his killing, saying, “it’s scary for me to think about a fellow VA employee being murdered by the same government that they work for.”
Halioua said she was later told she was under investigation for her participation in the vigil and remarks to the press. Investigators emailed her photos of her at the vigil from press coverage, in which she was circled and labeled.
Federal employees are generally barred from speaking on behalf of their employers in the press, but are still allowed to speak in a private capacity, which Halioua said she made clear she was doing. She made sure to not wear any VA identification to the vigil in order to comply with the rules.
She also said that she believes she was targeted for investigation due to her role as the local president of the American Federation of Government Employees in Georgia.
Investigators ultimately found that she had violated agency rules because she gave an interview without obtaining prior approval, a result she says she disagrees with.
“I think that it’s a scare tactic,” she said of the investigation. “I think that it is a method really to silence the employees with the loudest voices.”
The investigation into Halioua comes as the Trump administration has obstructed probes into the killers of Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, who was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in January.
In a highly unusual move, the Trump administration halted a civil rights investigation by the Department of Justice into Good’s killing, despite such investigations being regular procedure in cases of a killing by a federal agent. Instead, the DOJ opened an investigation into Good’s widow, reports said.
Meanwhile, the agency is reportedly conducting a civil rights investigation into the killing of Pretti, but, in another unusual move, barred local and state agencies from accessing materials related to the investigation.
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