But Dr. Shulkin personally pushed back hard against the findings.

“The report is not accurate, not objective,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “I was horrified when I saw the way the investigator conducted himself, leading the witness with his own interpretation and the bias.”

He said the department usually has weeks to review and respond to reports, but he had only two working days.

In an unusual 28-page rebuttal attached to the report by his lawyers, Dr. Shulkin included findings from an independent ethics expert, affidavits from witnesses who contradicted the report, and transcripts of interviews conducted by the investigators that the lawyers said showed bias.

The department’s chief of staff, Vivieca Wright Simpson, also disputed the findings.

The report found that in seeking approval for the secretary’s wife, Dr. Merle Bari, to take the trip at public expense, Ms. Wright Simpson misrepresented to the department’s ethics office that a planned “special recognition dinner” was definite. “Ms. Wright Simpson’s false representations and alteration of an official record may have violated federal criminal statutes,” the report said, adding that the inspector general had referred the matter to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. The department declined to prosecute.

Ms. Wright Simpson said in an interview on Wednesday that the dinner she mentioned in the email had in fact taken place. She said she was not given any chance to see the inspector general’s report or respond to it before its release, despite requests through her lawyer.

The report said the secretary and his wife improperly accepted the Wimbledon tickets from Victoria Gosling, an organizer of the 2016 Invictus Games, which brought together wounded veterans for competition. The tickets’ face price was about $350, but their resale value, according to the report, was about $3,500.

Accepting such a gift violated ethics standards, according to the report. It recommended that the secretary repay the cost of the tickets and reimburse the government for his wife’s travel.