Navy Whistleblower Tied to Coast Guard Scandal Details Her Fight Against the Boss She’s Suing

A U.S. Navy civilian whistleblower has been forced to return to the same command and directly report to a boss she is suing.

Kathryn Denise Rucker Krepp recently requested a federal judge to stop service orders for her return to the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), citing alleged discrimination, harassment and retaliation by her superior, a senior official. Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao is listed as the defendant as part of a lawsuit Krepp filed in July 2025.

Krepp claims she was retaliated against not just for reporting a hostile workplace, but for her past roles and being an intermediary between the military and government. She was a material witness in Senate and House Oversight Committees, and Department of Homeland Security Inspector General, investigations of sexual misconduct in the U.S. Coast Guard known as “Operation Fouled Anchor.”

A July 28 motion for preliminary injunction filed by Krepp’s attorney, Christopher Nuneviller, requested to stop the forced return of Krepp to NHHC, citing the circumstances and her lawsuit.

However, Military.com learned that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied the injunction request, saying in part that Krepp didn’t prove that working for the individual she is suing harms her, nor does it create a “chilling effect” on whistleblowers.

On Monday, Aug. 3, Krepp was forced to report back to NHHC and work under an individual she sued.

Military.com found that she was told she could keep the billet/title but not the work. She was instructed to write a book about the Washington Navy Yard, even though writing a book is not in her position description.

She was also told that she couldn’t go back to her office, spending time “isolated” and alone in the research room of the Navy Library. She learned that she couldn’t have access to all of her electronic files, meaning she’s an NHHC employee who is not allowed to connect with NHHC servers.

A no-contact order issued for one individual she is suing has also been issued, meaning she is not allowed in certain areas she regularly visited previously, like the front office or its conference room, unless granted formal visitation.

The Navy declined to comment to Military.com, saying that it does not remark on ongoing litigation.

How the Lawsuit Originated

Krepp’s legal complaint began due to her past ties with the Coast Guard, particularly related to Operation Fouled Anchor.

The multi-year investigation associated with that operation uncovered and analyzed decades of unreported, uninvestigated and unpunished sexual assaults in the service between 1988 and 2006.

Coast Guard officials’ attempts to conceal vital information from lawmakers and the public to avoid a scandal and to not devalue the reputation of the service backfired, as the media reported the myriad incidents in 2023, leading to congressional hearings, government watchdog reviews, and whistleblower testimonies.

Operation Fouled Anchor and its aftermath is what eventually led to Krepp filing suit in July 2025, bringing forth civil litigation alleging discrimination and a hostile work environment complete with harassment based on her gender and for retaliation related to filing an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint.

Allegations by Krepp Against Navy Superiors

The 97-page complaint filed July 23, 2025, centers on Krepp’s superiors—Navy Rear Adm. (Ret.) Samuel Cox, director of NHHC, and Navy Capt. (Ret.) Patrick Burns, deputy director of NHHC—and their alleged wrongdoing regarding sex (gender) and retaliation for Krepp’s whistleblowing activities.

The complaint also claims that Krepp was retaliated against for “calling out” misogynistic behavior toward herself and other NHHC female employees, as well as unfair behavior based on gender.

Burns, with the “explicit and implicit support of” Cox, allegedly allowed and encouraged NHHC’s white male directors “to create a hostile work environment for” Krepp and other female NHHC headquarters employees by undertaking a pattern of misogynistic and retaliatory behavior, contrary to the Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (the “No FEAR Act”), according to the lawsuit.

The suit claims that the behavior delved into reporting safety issues, including the assault of a female employee in the NHHC building on the Washington Navy Yard, and NHHC leadership “undertaking a pattern explicit and implicit acts of misogynistic and retaliatory behavior specifically toward Krepp.

One cited example alleges that she was significantly delayed for more than four months upon waiting for approval of Navy-required telework agreements—even when telework agreements for the other white male directors were supposedly approved within days of their request.

Krepp also claims that she was routinely referred to as the “speech police” within her place of employment, even after she repeatedly asked NHHC leadership and senior male staff to refrain from using the words “bitch” and “pussy” in the office.

When Krepp was mandated by the Navy to return Aug. 3 to NHHC, it was to work directly for Cox—who would serve as her supervisor, rater, senior rater and time card keeper.

EEOC Complaints and Other Accusations

Krepp, a Coast Guard veteran, filed two EEOC complaints against the NHHC, Cox and Burns in the summer of 2024 for the aforementioned reasons.

About six weeks after filing those, Burns filed charges against her—with Cox designated as the deciding official. The charges were found to be false, according to Krepp, and she was placed on two details pending resolution of the EEOC cases and subsequent lawsuit.

Nuneviller told Military.com that he has four NHHC clients who have EEOC complaints against at least seven NHHC senior staffers, who all but two were described as “old white males” who are accused of derogatory remarks against females based on gender, or if they were pregnant.

Another facet of the lawsuit, according to Nuneviller, is how leadership rejected Krepp’s recommendations for a broader Navy applicant pool rather than the veterans and older white males only allegedly being considered by Cox and Burns.

Krepp, part of a hiring panel at the time, wanted to open the process to all. But she was then removed from said panel and replaced by another female. One of the EEOC complaints centers on how Burns allegedly used Krepp’s perceived ineptitude “so that it all looked as though Denise was incompetent and wasn’t doing exactly as she was told.”

Email records submitted into the record show otherwise, Nuneviller said. It led to a harassment complaint about the situation involving the hiring panel.

Krepp, for essentially the past 18 months, has bounced around details “because we were always under the impression that she was in the detail process until the litigation/EEO process was complete,” Nuneviller said.

Cox purportedly said her case lacked merit, adding that she wasn’t discriminated againt and would work for him as a special projects officer.

“It would appear that the Navy is continuing to retaliate against her because they’re bringing her back to work for the person who she’s got significant claims against, in a position that she’s not being returned to officially on paper, as far as we can tell,” Nuneviller said. “She’s being brought in as an adjunct to him under his sole and direct responsibility.

“So, we filed the preliminary injunction in the stay to basically say, you can’t do this.”

Where the Legal Ride Goes From Here

Nuneviller said that he and Krepp currently have two things pending before the court, including the government’s motion to dismiss.

“It’s an extraordinary uphill battle,” he said. “I think that the battle that we face is a government that is going to throw every possible legal maneuver at us to wear her down. It is a common Department of Justice tactic that if an employee complains, they just file every motion. Like, we got a motion to dismiss, which takes a significant amount of time.”

“We have everything stacked against us. The only way to beat this system is to have one case chip away a little bit,” he added, conjuring Thurgood Marshall’s legal acumen and persistence in Brown v. Board of Education.

Krepp served in the Coast Guard from 1998 to 2002, recalling how even back then admirals—both male and female—would confide in her how they were victims of sexual assault.

She joined the Navy in March 2020, literally two weeks before COVID hit. She was recruited to join the Navy as a civilian because of her background as an elected official.

After knowing Burns dating back to both of them working at TSA in the early 2000s, she became a locally elected official in Washington D.C. Due to her knowledge about planning, zoning and transportation, she was recruited.

Krepp was also recruited to be chief counsel of the Maritime Administration, where she reported sexual assaults at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy “and paid the price for that.” When given a choice in February 2012 of either being fired or resigning, she chose to resign.

For 53-year-old, it’s been a whirlwind. She joined the military shortly after the Tailhook scandal in 1991, where Navy and Marine aviation officers allegedly assaulted upwards of 83 women and seven men in Las Vegas.

She stated that her generation of female veterans were told that we were entering a military that was cleaning up its act and no longer tolerating sexist and toxic behavior.

The U.S. military is in her blood. Her father was at West Point, her mother was in the Women’s Army Corps.

She’s not giving up without a fight.

“If you’re going to take me out for standing up, then take me out in public,” Krepp told Military.com. “I’m standing up for a reason. Don’t assassinate me at twilight. You’re going to shoot me for standing up for women, you’re going to shoot me at 10 o’clock in the morning—when everybody can see it.”