Pirate's Cove

Here’s your most transparent administration ever, and a weird headline from the Washington Post

Aides knew of possible White House link to Cartagena, Colombia, prostitution scandal

Rather makes little sense in terms of the article

As nearly two dozen Secret Service agents and members of the military were punished or fired following a 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia, Obama administration officials repeatedly denied that anyone from the White House was involved.

But new details drawn from government documents and interviews show that senior White House aides were given information at the time suggesting that a prostitute was an overnight guest in the hotel room of a presidential advance-team member — yet that information was never thoroughly investigated or publicly acknowledged.

The information that the Secret Service shared with the White House included hotel records and firsthand accounts — the same types of evidence the agency and military relied on to determine who in their ranks was involved.

The Secret Service shared its findings twice in the weeks after the scandal with top White House officials, including then-White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. Each time, she and other presidential aides conducted an interview with the advance-team member and concluded that he had done nothing wrong.

So, the White House knew about the prostitutes, and decided to lie to the American public about it.

“We were directed at the time . . . to delay the report of the investigation until after the 2012 election,” David Nieland, the lead investigator on the Colombia case for the DHS inspector general’s office, told Senate staffers, according to three people with knowledge of his statement.

Nieland added that his superiors told him “to withhold and alter certain information in the report of investigation because it was potentially embarrassing to the administration.”

Not only did the White House lie about their knowledge of the scandal, someone surely pressured the investigators to withhold information for political purposes. As to the headline, that goes to

Whether the White House volunteer, Jonathan Dach, was involved in wrongdoing in Cartagena, Colombia, remains unclear. Dach, then a 25-year-old Yale University law student, declined to be interviewed, but through his attorney he denied hiring a prostitute or bringing anyone to his hotel room. Dach has long made the same denials to White House officials.

The White House’s big investigation was to simply ash Dach, twice, if he was involved. He said no, they said “move on.” Yet, the post does the investigation, and finds that Dach had an “extra guest”, a woman, registered to his room. Yes, prostitution is legal in Cartegena, however, if that’s why the White House found no wrong doing, then why discipline Secret Service agents?

Obfuscate, lie, misdirect, lean on people, especially loyalists, stonewall, never admit doing wrong, finally, years later, state that this is old news and it’s time to move on. Typical Obama administration.

Crossed at Right Wing News.