Background
George Jadue, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement criminal investigator, previously worked as a State Department special agent. After criminal charges concerning citizenship disclosures on a security questionnaire, Jadue entered an agreement under which federal prosecutors would not retry a remaining count and he would resign from the State Department. When he later applied to the Department of Homeland Security, his responses on a security questionnaire and during follow-up inquiries did not fully disclose that agreement, the precise charges against him, or the prior suspension of his security clearance.
DHS removed Jadue for lack of candor based on 11 specifications. He then filed a mixed-case complaint alleging discrimination and nondiscrimination grounds, but DHS substantially missed regulatory deadlines for investigating and deciding the complaint. Before the Merit Systems Protection Board, Jadue sought sanctions for those delays. The administrative judge denied sanctions, sustained four lack-of-candor specifications, and upheld removal. After a split decision by the two-member Board made the administrative judge’s ruling final, Jadue appealed and formally abandoned his discrimination claims.
The Court’s Holding
The Federal Circuit dismissed for lack of jurisdiction the portion of Jadue’s appeal challenging the denial of sanctions. Although abandoning his discrimination claims converted the matter into a pure adverse-action appeal over which the Federal Circuit could exercise jurisdiction, the sanctions request arose entirely from DHS’s untimely processing of the discrimination component of his mixed case. The court held that Jadue’s abandonment extended to requests for relief based on those discrimination claims, including related procedural sanctions.
The court affirmed the four sustained lack-of-candor specifications because substantial evidence showed that Jadue knowingly failed to provide complete and forthright information about his agreement with prosecutors, the nature of his criminal charges, and the suspension of his security clearance. It also upheld removal. Because DHS brought only one charge—lack of candor—and that charge remained sustained, the administrative judge did not have to independently rebalance the penalty merely because seven specifications failed. The deciding official also testified that either of two sustained specifications alone would have warranted removal.
Key Takeaways
- A federal employee who abandons discrimination claims to obtain Federal Circuit review also abandons procedural relief, including sanctions, that depends entirely on those claims.
- Lack of candor does not require proof of intent to deceive; a knowing failure to be fully forthright can support the charge.
- When an agency proves its sole disciplinary charge, failure to prove every supporting specification does not automatically require an independent reweighing of the penalty.
Why It Matters
The decision draws a firm jurisdictional boundary for formerly mixed federal-employment cases. A petitioner may waive discrimination claims and pursue independent civil-service issues in the Federal Circuit, but cannot preserve procedural challenges whose sole basis is the agency’s handling of the abandoned discrimination claims.
The ruling also confirms that agencies may sustain lack-of-candor charges through knowingly incomplete answers, even without proving an intent to deceive. For penalty review, it distinguishes between losing an entire charge and losing only some specifications supporting a charge.