MAY 16, 2023
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JUDICIAL WATCH
Judicial Watch: Pentagon IG Concludes Naval Academy Superintendent Made False Statements in Effort to End Career of Midshipman
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received 19-pages of records from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) consisting of an internal report by its Inspector General titled “Report of Investigation of Vice Admiral (VADM) Sean L. Buck, U.S. Navy, Superintendent, U.S. Naval Academy,” which concluded that Buck made false statements in discussions with senior Navy officials during disenrollment proceedings against a midshipman for perceived inappropriate tweets.
The internal report, dated September 2022, was uncovered thanks to a Judicial Watch March 2023 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Defense, No. 1:23-cv-00566) filed after the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General (“DODIG”) failed to respond to a December 2022 FOIA request for all records related to an investigation conducted by the DODIG, which it publicly referenced in its most recent annual report to Congress. The reference is on page 54 of the Report to Congress. In the report, DODIG informed Congress of the following incident:
The DOD OIG investigated allegations that a Navy vice admiral made false official statements to senior Navy officials on three occasions. We did not substantiate the allegations. We concluded that the vice admiral did not make a false official statement, as defined by Article 107 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, on any of the three occasions. The DOD OIG initiated this investigation based on complaints filed with the DOD Hotline.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/naval-academy-superintendent/