Official who oversaw VA computer system that caused havoc in Spokane charged with accepting gifts from government contractors

WASHINGTON – A former top official at the Department of Veterans Affairs, who oversaw the purchase and deployment of a flawed computer system that led to patient harm after it was launched in Spokane, was charged on Wednesday with hiding thousands of dollars in cash and other gifts he received from government contractors.

John Windom, who served as executive director of the VA’s Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization from 2017 through 2021, was indicted by a grand jury in D.C. on three counts related to failing to disclose gifts – including a Louis Vuitton gift card worth $8,200 and thousands more in cash and casino chips – from a coterie of government contractors involved in the lucrative project.

“As alleged, the defendant exploited his senior position for personal gain and concealed gifts and financial relationships that created serious conflicts of interest in the health care of our nation’s veterans,” Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said in a statement. “Such conduct is not only a betrayal of the public trust – it undermines confidence in the institutions dedicated to serving those who have sacrificed for this country.”

The VA’s Office of Inspector General investigated the case along with the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia and the FBI’s Washington field office.

According to the indictment, Windom was responsible for overseeing the process of awarding the $10 billion contract to Cerner Corp., which was acquired by Oracle in 2022 and is now known as Oracle Health. The estimated cost of the project, including related expenses, is now projected to exceed $33 billion.

The first Trump administration selected Spokane’s Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center as the pilot site for the system, where it launched in October 2020. A joint investigation by The Spokesman-Review and the Washington Post published in December found that flaws in the system played a role in more than 4,400 cases of “known harms” to veterans in the Inland Northwest as well as southern Oregon and central Ohio, where the system was launched in 2022 despite warnings that it had caused serious problems in Spokane.

During his time at the VA, the Justice Department alleges, Windom met regularly with at least seven owners and employees of minority-owned businesses, whom he referred to as the “Power Group,” who regularly paid for his meals and drinks at a casino outside D.C. and nearby restaurants. According to the indictment, Windom used his position as executive director “to encourage, monitor, and facilitate contracting and subcontracting opportunities for members of the Power Group,” both related and unrelated to the massive project intended to replace the VA’s existing electronic health record system with a commercial product that Windom had previously helped the Defense Department acquire.

In one case, Cerner awarded a $1.7 million contract to one member of the “Power Group” after Windom demanded that the company improve its diversity efforts, according to the indictment. Another member of the group, with whom Windom was allegedly in an “undisclosed romantic relationship,” was put in charge of those supposed diversity efforts.

In a message to the group included in the indictment, Windom instructed them not to tell anyone “that you know me, interact with me or have any type of relationship with me.” In another, the retired Navy captain allegedly told the group, “As a reminder, ‘loose lips sink ships.’ ”

If found guilty of the charges, Windom could face financial penalties and up to 20 years in prison.

Windom was indicted just weeks before the VA is set to restart the troubled program by launching at four hospitals in Michigan in April, then nine more in other states by the end of 2026 – an aggressive pace that will test just how much the department and Oracle have improved a system that has so far only been used in relatively small hospitals and clinics.

“Everyone can be certain this time that our leaders are focused, engaged, and owning it,” Deputy VA Secretary Paul Lawrence wrote in a March 17 statement explaining “what’s different this time” and why launching the system on a far wider scale starting in April, despite persistent problems, won’t cause the same harm it did in the Inland Northwest.

On March 18, the top Democrat on the House subcommittee responsible for oversight of the project unveiled legislation that could force the VA to terminate the contract with Oracle if the company does not get the program on track within two years. Similar legislation has circulated in Congress for years, but VA officials under Democratic and Republican administrations have argued that scrapping the system after spending billions on it would be a bad decision.

As of Thursday, the Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization Office’s website still listed Windom as the joint VA-Defense Department office’s deputy director, a role he assumed in January 2022 when then-VA Secretary Denis McDonough reorganized the leadership of the troubled program in the wake of problems that emerged in Spokane. The Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization Office did not respond on Thursday when asked if Windom remains employed there.

According to an official bio in 2019, Windom “successfully led the multi-billion-dollar acquisition of the Cerner Millennium solution,” the system that was launched in Spokane, and later “focused on the implementation, integration, deployment, and oversight” of the system. He previously worked on the Pentagon’s acquisition of the Cerner system, which caused similar problems when it was first launched at Fairchild Air Force Base in 2017.

In a parallel case, a government procurement official in Sweden misled politicians into buying the Cerner system in 2017, even though it did not meet European Union safety requirements, according to reporting published March 12 by the Swedish news outlet Sjukhusläkaren. That official then took a job at Cerner with twice the salary.

According to a March 17 report by the Swedish medical journal Läkartidningen, the Swedish regional government scrapped the system without ever deploying it, despite spending about $234 million on the project, after an expert review found the system was not “useful enough to be implemented.”

Since Senate Republicans confirmed her on a party-line vote in August, Pirro, a former judge and longtime Fox News host, has drawn attention for launching politically motivated prosecutions of Trump’s perceived enemies. But Mike Missal, who served as VA inspector general from 2016 until January 2025, said in a brief interview Thursday that his office began investigating Windom before Trump returned to office.

“The evidence was gathered well before this administration,” Missal said, declining to elaborate because of the ongoing case.

A federal judge ruled in September that Trump broke the law when he fired Missal and 16 other inspectors general en masse without notifying Congress, but the judge declined to reinstate the agency watchdogs. Missal was replaced six months later by Cheryl Mason, an adviser to VA Secretary Doug Collins, whom Democrats accused of being too loyal to Trump to serve in the traditionally independent oversight role.