U.K. Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Do­minic Raab grudg­ing­ly re­signed Fri­day af­ter an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion found he bul­lied civ­il ser­vants, though he crit­i­cized the re­port as “flawed.”

Raab’s an­nounce­ment came the day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Rishi Sunak re­ceived the find­ings of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to eight for­mal com­plaints that Raab, who is al­so jus­tice sec­re­tary, had been abu­sive to­ward staff mem­bers dur­ing a pre­vi­ous stint in that of­fice and while serv­ing as Britain’s for­eign sec­re­tary and Brex­it sec­re­tary.

At­tor­ney Adam Tol­ley, who con­duct­ed the in­quiry, said Raab “act­ed in a way which was in­tim­i­dat­ing,” was “un­rea­son­ably and per­sis­tent­ly ag­gres­sive” and “in­tro­duced a puni­tive el­e­ment” to his lead­er­ship style.

“His con­duct al­so in­volved an abuse or mis­use of pow­er in a way that un­der­mines or hu­mil­i­ates,” Tol­ley wrote in the 48-page re­port. “His con­duct was bound to be ex­pe­ri­enced as un­der­min­ing or hu­mil­i­at­ing by the af­fect­ed in­di­vid­ual, and it was so ex­pe­ri­enced.”

Raab, 49, de­nied claims he be­lit­tled and de­meaned his staff and said he “be­haved pro­fes­sion­al­ly at all times,” but said he was re­sign­ing be­cause he had promised to do so if the bul­ly­ing com­plaints were sub­stan­ti­at­ed.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion made two find­ings of bul­ly­ing against him and dis­missed the oth­ers, Raab said in his res­ig­na­tion let­ter. He called the find­ings “flawed” and said the in­quiry “set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent” by “set­ting the thresh­old for bul­ly­ing so low.”

Raab said he quit be­cause he was “du­ty bound” to re­sign since he had promised to.

Sunak said he ac­cept­ed the res­ig­na­tion “with great sad­ness,” in a let­ter that praised much of the work Raab had done. He al­so re­ferred to “short­com­ings” in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which he said had “neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed every­one in­volved.”

The res­ig­na­tion spared Sunak the dif­fi­cult task of de­cid­ing the fate of his top deputy.

If he had fired Raab, he would have opened him­self to crit­i­cism for ap­point­ing him in the first place de­spite re­port­ed­ly be­ing warned about Raab’s be­hav­iour; if he had kept him in the job, he would have been crit­i­cized for fail­ing to fol­low through on his promise to re­store in­tegri­ty to the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment.

Sunak re­ceived the in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­port Thurs­day morn­ing and didn’t im­me­di­ate­ly make a de­ci­sion. Spokesper­son Max Blain, speak­ing be­fore Raab’s res­ig­na­tion, said Sunak still had “full con­fi­dence” in Raab while he re­viewed the re­port.

The min­is­te­r­i­al code of con­duct re­quires min­is­ters to treat peo­ple with re­spect and have prop­er and ap­pro­pri­ate re­la­tion­ships with col­leagues, civ­il ser­vants and staff. It says ha­rass­ment, dis­crim­i­na­tion and bul­ly­ing will not be tol­er­at­ed.

Sunak’s de­lay in not act­ing swift­ly, as he promised, gave his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tack him for dither­ing.

Op­po­si­tion Labour leader Keir Starmer crit­i­cized Sunak for fail­ing to sack Raab.

“What I think this shows is the con­tin­u­al weak­ness of the prime min­is­ter,” Starmer told broad­cast­ers. “He should nev­er have ap­point­ed him in the first place, along with oth­er mem­bers of the Cab­i­net that shouldn’t have been ap­point­ed, and then he didn’t sack him. Even to­day, it’s Raab who re­signed rather than the Prime Min­is­ter who acts.”

Raab was elect­ed to Par­lia­ment in 2010 and un­suc­cess­ful­ly sought to be­come Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty leader in 2019 be­fore throw­ing his sup­port be­hind Boris John­son. Ap­point­ed deputy prime min­is­ter un­der John­son, he briefly took charge of the gov­ern­ment when John­son was hos­pi­tal­ized with COVID-19 in April 2020.

Raab said in his let­ter that he had “not in­ten­tion­al­ly be­lit­tled any­one” and was “gen­uine­ly sor­ry for any un­in­tend­ed stress or of­fense that any of­fi­cials felt.”

He not­ed the in­quiry con­clud­ed he had not “sworn or shout­ed at any­one, let alone thrown any­thing or oth­er­wise phys­i­cal­ly in­tim­i­dat­ed any­one.”

The bul­ly­ing in­quiry is the lat­est ethics headache for Sunak, who vowed to re­store or­der and in­tegri­ty to gov­ern­ment af­ter three years of in­sta­bil­i­ty un­der pre­de­ces­sors John­son and Liz Truss. Mul­ti­ple scan­dals brought John­son down in sum­mer 2022, and Truss quit in Oc­to­ber af­ter six weeks in of­fice when her tax-cut­ting eco­nom­ic plans sparked may­hem on the fi­nan­cial mar­kets.

But Sunak has strug­gled to shake off op­po­si­tion al­le­ga­tions that the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment re­mains mired in scan­dal and sleaze, and he is now fac­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion him­self.

A par­lia­men­tary watch­dog an­nounced this week that he was look­ing in­to whether Sunak prop­er­ly dis­closed his wife’s in­ter­est in a com­pa­ny that stands to ben­e­fit from a mas­sive boost to free child­care in his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s bud­get.

A mem­ber of Sunak’s Cab­i­net, Gavin Williamson, quit in No­vem­ber over bul­ly­ing claims. In Jan­u­ary, Sunak fired Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty chair­man Nad­him Za­hawi for fail­ing to come clean about a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar tax dis­pute.

A sep­a­rate in­quiry is un­der­way in­to claims John­son se­cured a loan with the help of a Con­ser­v­a­tive donor, Richard Sharp, who was lat­er ap­point­ed chair­man of the BBC. —LON­DON (AP)

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Sto­ry by BRI­AN MEL­LEY and JILL LAW­LESS | As­so­ci­at­ed Press