(Newswire.net — October 10, 2014) — Washington Post said on Wednesday that senior White House aides knew at the time about a prostitution scandal two years ago that led to disciplinary action against nearly two dozen officials from the Secret Service and US military.
Several Secret Service agents and military personnel were disciplined after it was revealed in 2012 that they hired prostitutes ahead of Pres. Obama’s trip to Cartagena for the Sixth Summit of the Americas.
Mark Sullivan, Secret Service Director resigned a few months later and was replaced by Julia Pierson, a long-time officer within the agency.
Pierson, resigned earlier this month after Washington Post journalist Carol Leonnig published damaging accounts concerning multiple security breaches suffered under Pierson’s watch.
Contrary to the administration’s official claims about scandal in Columbia 2012, hotel records indicated a prostitute was visiting a Secret Service Agent at a Cartagena, Colombia hotel, according to Ms. Leonnig.
Meanwhile, the Senate committee dive more deeply into misconduct on the trip and found additional evidence from records and eyewitnesses who had accompanied the team member in Colombia.
New details revealed the lead investigator involved in that DHS-administered probe was “directed to delay the report of the investigation until after the 2012 election” because “it was potentially embarrassing to the administration.” said Leonnig.
However, “allegations about any inappropriate conduct by Jonathan Dach in Cartagena are utterly and completely false.”said Richard Sauber, an attorney for Dach described by the Post as “a prominent Democratic donor who gave $23,900 to the party in2008 to help elect Obama,”
A spokesperson for the White House Eric Schultz, said in an internal review conducted after the scandal first broke that he “did not identify any inappropriate behavior on the part of the White House advance team.”
However, “The White House needs to come clean,” Rep. Chaffetz (R-Utah) told Fox News after the Post article was published.