New details released by The Washington Post on Wednesday show that senior Obama administration aides knew about the 2012 Colombia prostitution scandal in which a prostitute supposedly stayed as a guest in the Cartagena, Colombia hotel room of a presidential advance-team member.
The Secret Service shared information including hotel records and firsthand accounts twice with top White House officials in the weeks after the scandal first broke, reported the Post, but administration officials brushed them off as inconsequential.
"Each time, [then-White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler] and other presidential aides conducted an interview with the advance-team member and concluded that he had done nothing wrong," said the Post.
The Post also reported that the inspector general's office ordered for evidence to be withheld to lessen the political consequences due to it being "in the heat of an election year." Releasing the information at that time could potentially "embarrass the administration," David Nieland, the DHS inspector general's lead investigator, was told by his superiors.
"We were directed at the time . . . to delay the report of the investigation until after the 2012 election," Nieland told Senate staffers, according to three people with knowledge of his statement, the Post reported.
Inspector general investigators fought "heatedly with each other over whether to pursue White House team members' possible involvement," said the Post, and "office staffers who raised questions about a White House role said they were put on administrative leave as a punishment for doing so."
Ten Secret Service members lost their jobs due to how they behaved in Cartagena - their excessive drinking and contact with foreign nationals jeopardized national security, claimed the White House.
The White House has denied having any knowledge on wrongdoings, which they repeated again Wednesday after the Post published their story.
"As was reported more than two years ago, the White House conducted an internal review that did not identify any inappropriate behavior on the part of the White House advance team," said principal deputy White House press secretary Eric Schultz.
