The Obama administration is denying a report the White House initially covered up accounts that a volunteer with the president’s advance team in Colombia for a 2012 summit might have had a prostitute as an overnight guest.
White House staff were cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident, spokesman Josh Earnest said in a Twitter posting today after a story was published by the Washington Post.
“A bipartisan committee report released in April rejected the accusation of a coverup,” Earnest said in the posting.
The newspaper reported that administration officials, including then-White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, were given “hotel records and firsthand accounts,” the same type of information the Secret Service and the U.S. military used to to determine who was involved in misconduct during preparations for a summit meeting.
The Post said Ruemmler was given the information about allegations involving the White House advance team twice in the weeks following the scandal and that “each time, she and other presidential aides conducted an interview with the advance-team member and concluded that he had done nothing wrong.”
Ruemmler, 43, who left the White House counsel’s job in June after serving three years, is widely considered one of Obama’s top candidates to replace Attorney General Eric Holder, who has said he will resign as soon as a replacement is confirmed. She didn’t respond to requests for comment, the newspaper said.
Security Breaches
The disclosures about the prostitution scandal follow a series of recent security breaches by the Secret Service that will be the topic of a House panel’s public and classified hearings in November, a group of bipartisan lawmakers said.
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, and the top Democrat, Representative John Conyers of Michigan, joined by other lawmakers, wrote to the acting director of the Secret Service, John Clancy, demanding answers about recent security breaches.
They cited, among others, a fence jumper who made it inside the executive mansion and an armed security contractor with a criminal record who was allowed on an elevator with the president.
“We are deeply concerned with the service’s ability to effectively identify, intercept and disrupt threats to the president of the United States,” the lawmakers said in a statement.
Director Resigns
Julia Pierson, the first woman to lead the agency in charge of protecting the president, resigned Oct. 1 amid mounting criticism over a series of security lapses. Clancy was named as an interim replacement. Pierson replaced Mark Sullivan, who was in charge of the Secret Service at the time of the incident in Colombia.
In the prostitution investigation, Ruemmler’s main role involved reviewing records and conducting interviews, the Post reported. She thought it would be “insane” to send a team to Colombia to investigate a volunteer over something that’s not a criminal act in parts of that country, the newspaper said, citing an unnamed administration official.
U.S. Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican who is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has requested records of Ruemmler’s review, according to the Post.
Chaffetz made the request in a letter last week to White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, expressing concern that “steps were taken by the administration to cover up or deflect” White House involvement in the scandal.
Among the information cited by the newspaper is that an investigator into the prostitution allegations was told to delay the report until after the 2012 midterm elections.
The Post identified the advance team member as Jonathan Dach, a 25-year-old Yale University law student and son of Leslie Dach, a Democratic donor who gave $23,900 in 2008. Jonathan Dach now works in the State Department as an adviser in the Office of Global Women’s Issues, according to the Post.