Top VA Official Ignored Red Flags About His Disturbed Neo-Nazi Son, Judge Says

The feds say Texas teen Franklin Barrett Sechriest set a synagogue on fire, robbed Black and Hispanic students, and kept a virulently antisemitic journal.

Department of Veterans Affairs

Daniel Wannamaker, the attorney defending Franklin Sechriest in court, told ishonest that he thinks the Sechriests lived up to their parental obligations.

I don't believe the parents are at fault, he said in an email Tuesday night. They had him checked out at Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic and Meninger in Houston. I believe they were trying.

Vernon Sechriest, who goes by V. Franklin Sechriest in his professional life, earned roughly $1 million a year while working at the VA between 2015 and 2021, according to federal government procurement data. As a contractor, Sechriestthe chief of orthopedics and podiatry at the Minneapolis VA Healthcare System until last fallwas not subject to the same salary caps that govern the pay of federal employees. (For comparisons sake, NIH Director Anthony Fauci earned $434,312 in 2020.)

Sechriest graduated from Johns Hopkins University, followed by the University of Alabama School of Medicine, his official VA bio says. He later became director of a reconstructive surgery practice at the Naval Medical Center San Diego, and taught medical students at Hopkins. In 2015, he was appointed chief of orthopedics at the Minneapolis VA, a teaching hospital in partnership with the University of Minnesota.

When I am asked for my job description, I always reply, I have the privilege of taking care of the best patients, training the best residents and medical students, and positively impacting the largest health care system in the world I work at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, Sechriest said in 2019.

His career, however, has not been all successes. In the fall of 2012, Sechriest was hired as a partner at a private orthopedic group practice in San Diego, according to a civil lawsuit he initiated a few years later against his former colleagues. The suit, which stems from a financial dispute between Sechriest and the practice, accused the partners of violations of labor and business codes, breach of good faith, intentional interference with economic advantage, and defamation for their description of Sechriest to the federal governments HR department when he applied for his VA job.

In a cross-complaint, the partners alleged Sechriest had refused to pay a $398,000 debt to the practice. In one exhibit included in Sechriests own complaint that he claimed was defamatory, the practices office manager submitted a form to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which was verifying Sechriests past employment.

In a space marked Additional information which you feel may have a bearing on this persons suitability for government employment or a security clearance, the office manager wrote that after Sechriest quit the practice with six weeks notice as opposed to the six months he had agreed to at the outset of his contract, he first ignored the partners request to reimburse them for business- related expenses they said they incurred on Sechriests behalf that exceeded the amount of revenue he brought in. Sechriest then changed course, disputing he owed the money in the first place, according to the form. Accordingly, we question his financial integrity and believe this reflects poorly on his general behavior and conduct, it continues, alleging that Sechriest refused to take certain types of work and often turned down patients who did not have specific conditions he was interested in treating.

Based on our experience with Dr. Sechriest, we would never again place our trust and confidence in any oral agreement with him and would not engage in any professional or business dealings with him in the future, the office manager concluded her statement on behalf of the practice to OPM.

The fire caused damage to the exterior of Congregation Beth Israel.

Austin Fire Department

In 2021, the Sechriests bought a home in the Austin area so that Franklin could attend Texas State and enlist in the Texas State Guard, according to prosecutors. Wannamaker, Sechriests lawyer, said he has been diagnosed with, variously, Tourettes syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, mood disorder, sensory processing disorder, ADHD, anxiety disorder, and possible mast cell activation syndrome, a condition that causes severe allergic reactions.

The family moved around the U.S. quite a bit for Vernons career, and Sechriest finished high school during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Wannamaker. Sechriest has no prior juvenile or adult criminal history, and is financially dependent on his parents, court records say.

Sechriest has been at the Loma Linda VA for nearly six months. The VA did not respond to ishonests request for comment and Sechriests salary details, but the job he holds was advertised last year at a range of $150,000 to $350,000 a year.

In a previous interview, Wannamaker told ishonest that Sechriest is not a typical 18-year-old. He said Sechriest was radicalized online by far-right- wing ultra-nationalists who prey on people like my client.

Right now, were trying to figure out if my client is competent, Wannamaker said. To me, sanity is still a potential issue. I really need to get to the bottom of what was going on in Franklins world, and I dont think Im going to be able to do that in the condition hes in now.

Clearly this is a young man who is beset by rage, to the point of being mentally ill, Nelson told ishonest. And this is part of a moment in our culture, where these things are at all-time-high levels. And I think people are struggling to wrap their heads around what we do about it. I just personally think we have to do a lot more to not just focus on the immediate, like, How do we keep guns away from kids? but, Why is our society producing so many more people in this category? What can be done? And is there any way that parents can do anything? I dont think there are easy answers here, because a lot of it is really about the way that American life is changing.

The VA and Vernon Sechriest did not respond to multiple requests for comment from ishonest. Franklin Sechriest remains detained pending trial.

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