Former Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie, who served in the post under President Donald Trump, leads transition efforts at the Defense Department for the returning president. (Stars and Stripes)

WASHINGTON — Robert Wilkie, a former Department of Veterans Affairs secretary under President Donald Trump, has been tapped to lead the Defense Department’s transition efforts for the returning president, according to news reports.

Wilkie, a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, led the VA from 2018 until 2021 and previously served as the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. His new role was first reported by Politico.

Wilkie is expected to take charge of Trump’s search for a new defense secretary as well as other senior civilian leaders in the military.

As VA secretary, Wilkie sought to expand veteran access to health care, oversaw the department’s response to the first year of the coronavirus pandemic and worked on modernizing VA infrastructure, including the ongoing overhaul of electronic health records.

His tenure was also marked by controversy.

He most notably came under fire for his response to a complaint by a Navy veteran working as a Democratic congressional aide that she was sexually assaulted at the Washington VA Medical Center.

The VA’s inspector general determined Wilkie and his senior staff questioned the veteran’s credibility and attempted to denigrate her. The investigation deemed Wilkie’s response “at a minimum unprofessional” but did not find criminal wrongdoing.

Top Democratic lawmakers as well as the nation’s largest veterans organizations called on Wilkie to resign over the scandal but he remained in his post until the end of Trump’s first presidential term.

Jim Byrne, the VA’s former second-in-command who Wilkie abruptly fired in 2020, said later that year that he was dismissed because he refused “to trash” the aide.

Wilkie also drew criticism for his stance on social justice issues.

He opposed a gender-neutral update to the agency’s former male-centric motto — “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan” — and resisted the removal of German soldier gravestones etched with swastikas from VA-operated cemeteries.

In 2020, as the country grappled with racial tensions after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Wilkie said he had not heard any concerns from veterans about VA facilities named after Confederates. The VA at the time said it had no plans to rename a hospital named for a Confederate physician who supported slavery and lauded white supremacy.

Wilkie was formerly a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and attended memorial ceremonies for Confederate veterans for years. He said in 2018 that he no longer attended the events because they had become “part of the politics that divide us.”

“Today, there would be much more consideration taken into attending this type of memorial event,” Wilkie said in a statement to The Washington Post. “While I honor the soldiers in my family, and I am a student of history, the past is the past, and I do not live in the past.”

Trump has repeatedly stated his intent to reverse the “woke” decision by President Joe Biden’s administration to rename military bases that had honored Confederates.

Since leaving the Trump administration, Wilkie has been affiliated with the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded to promote Trump’s policy agenda.

Wilkie in 2020 praised Trump as “the first president since the 1890s who recognized the scourge of veteran suicide” and focused much of his own work at the Pentagon and VA on preventing suicide and sexual assault.

He was nominated for the VA secretary position after Trump’s initial pick, David Shulkin, was fired. A second contender, Trump’s personal physician Ronny Jackson, now a House lawmaker, withdrew from consideration amid allegations of misconduct.

Wilkie joined the VA after years of working in federal government. He began his career on Capitol Hill, where he was an aide to the controversial Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Rep. David Funderburk, R-N.C.

He later worked in the George W. Bush administration, first for Condoleezza Rice on the White House National Security Council and later at the Defense Department.

Wilkie grew up at North Carolina’s Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, as the son of an Army artillery commander who was severely wounded in Vietnam. He served in the U.S. Navy Reserve as a naval intelligence officer before joining the Air Force Reserve.