The investigator who led an internal review of the Secret Service's 2012 Colombian prostitution scandal resigned in August – three months after he himself allegedly hooked up with a prostitute,
The New York Times reports.
Sheriff's deputies in Broward County, Florida, allegedly saw David Nieland, the Department of Homeland Security's investigator, entering and leaving a building they had under surveillance last May as part of a prostitution probe, The Times reports.
The investigators then interviewed a prostitute who identified Nieland in a photograph, alleging he'd paid her for sex, The Times reports.
Nieland resigned Aug. 9, refusing to answer questions from Homeland Security's inspector general, The Times reports. Four days later, he tweeted that his career in government was over.
"Thank you to all who congratulated me on #retirement. On to the next chapter. Let's fix these problems and keep #USA#1!" he tweeted, The Times reports.
In a statement to The Times, a spokesman for Homeland Security's inspector general said officials "became aware in early May of this year of an incident in Florida that involved one of our employees."
"While the law prohibits us from commenting on specific cases, we do not tolerate misconduct on the part of our employees and take such allegations very seriously," spokesman William Hillburg told The Times.
"When we receive information of such misconduct, we will investigate thoroughly, and, during the course of or at the conclusion of such an investigation, we have a range of options available to us, including administrative suspension and termination."
Nieland emailed The Times saying the "allegation is not true." He declined to answer any questions, the newspaper reports.
The Inspector General's Office and the Broward County Sheriff's Office have investigations under way. Nieland has not been charged.
When deputies in Florida stopped Nieland last May after allegedly seeing him leave the building, he showed them a badge, allegedly telling them he was part of an undercover human trafficking operation with Homeland Security agents, The Times reports.
Nieland then allegedly reported to officials in the Inspector General's Office that he'd been stopped by police for a broken tailgate light, The Times reports.
Those officials contacted the sheriff's office, which reported Nieland's claim. When the Homeland Security officials said there was no such investigation, sheriff's deputies found a prostitute who identified Nieland as the man who'd paid for sex with her, The Times reports.
Nieland was at the center of a dispute over whether the Obama administration tried to cover up that a volunteer in a White House advance team had a prostitute in his room while in Cartegena, Colombia, in April 2012.
Eight Secret Service agents were fired in the wake of the scandal.
The agents were on assignment for a visit by President Barack Obama to the country, and were fired when it emerged they'd had prostitutes in their hotel rooms.
Nieland was head of the inspector general's Miami office when he was asked to lead an investigation into how the Secret Service handled the scandal, The Times reports.
The Inspector General's Office released a report describing how 13 agents and officers were involved with "female Colombian nationals" before Obama's arrival.
But after the report was released,
Nieland told staff members of a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee that he'd been asked to delete derogatory information because it was potentially damaging to the administration during an election year.
The derogatory information was the involvement of the White House advance team volunteer.
In its own report, the subcommittee said the changes in the inspector general's report were part of the ordinary editing process, and it found no evidence to substantiate Nieland's claims, The Times reports.
The White House also denied it had intervened in the preparation of the report, and said it had investigated the allegations against the White House volunteer but determined they weren't true, The Times reports.
Utah Republican Rep.
Jason Chaffetz has been critical of those claims, urging the White House to "come clean" about the scandal.