Friday, October 10, 2014

Pictured: The Obama aide (and top donor's son) accused of having Colombia prostitute in his hotel room during 'hookergate' scandal – and White House KNEW he was implicated all along

Pictured: The Obama aide (and top donor's son) accused of having Colombia prostitute in his hotel room during 'hookergate' scandal – and White House KNEW he was implicated all along

  • White House travel 'advance' aide Jonathan Dach was fingered for having a hooker in his room on the same Cartagena, Colombia trip where soliciting prostitutes got Secret Service agents fired
  • Dach, 28, now works for the State Department in the Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues
  • His father, a longtime Obama donor and former Wal-Mart lobbyist, leads an HHS division tasked with Obamacare implementation
  • A Homeland Security investigator was asked to withhold information about Dach's involvement from his report
  • He Claims his boss told him to sit on findings until after the 2012 election because it would be 'potentially embarrassing' for the White House
  • Administration spin focuses on claims that the story is old news, but allegations of a cover-up are brand new 
By David Martosko, Us Political Editor
Published: 03:26 EST, 9 October 2014 | Updated: 16:19 EST, 9 October 2014
Senior Obama administration officials knew about a White House aide's link to the Secret Service prostitution scandal and covered it up, according to a bombshell report that surfaced Wednesday night.
Jonathan Dach, 28, the staffer implicated by The Washington Post, was never disciplined after the Secret Service showed the White House evidence that he had a prostitute in his hotel room during a presidential 'advance' team journey to Cartagena, Colombia.
Instead, he was later hired as a 'multilateral issues and legal reform' adviser in the Office of Global Women's Issues at the U.S. State Department.
Dach's father, former Wal-Mart lobbying executive Leslie Dach, is a prominent Obama donor who contributed $23,900 to the Democratic party during the president's first White House campaign.
Aboard Air Force One on Thursday en route to a political fundraiser, Obama Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz told reporters that the White House's investigation wasn't influenced in any improper way by the Dach family.
Friends of Barack: Jonathan Dach (right) posed with then-Senator Barack Obama during a campaign staff 'family night' event in Springfield, Missouri on November 1, 2008. Also seen are Dach's father Leslie (2nd left), then a Wal-Mart lobbying executive, and his mother Mary Dickie (left)  
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Friends of Barack: Jonathan Dach (right) posed with then-Senator Barack Obama during a campaign staff 'family night' event in Springfield, Missouri on November 1, 2008. Also seen are Dach's father Leslie (2nd left), then a Wal-Mart lobbying executive, and his mother Mary Dickie (left)  
From hookergate to women's advocate? Dach proudly showed off his business card on Instagram and Twitter after he was hired to work in the State Department's Office of Global Women's Issues
From hookergate to women's advocate? Dach proudly showed off his business card on Instagram and Twitter after he was hired to work in the State Department's Office of Global Women's Issues
US Secret Service agents paid prostitutes at The Hilton Cartagena in 2012, a hotel where President Obama was due to arrive days later; White House advance aide Jonathan Dach was also implicated
US Secret Service agents paid prostitutes at The Hilton Cartagena in 2012, a hotel where President Obama was due to arrive days later; White House advance aide Jonathan Dach was also implicated
Schultz also fended off questions about whether Jonathan Dach will keep his job – 'I don't know anything about that' – and said he didn't know whether President Obama was aware of any details surrounding the case.
But the White House, he said, 'initiated an internal review' which 'looked at these allegations and found there was nothing to them.'
The Post reported that the 2012 hooker scandal, which cost a handful of Secret Service agents their jobs, also snared the younger Dach. He was 25 and a Yale University law student when he went to Cartagena. 
At issue is the Obama administration's interpretation of a hotel record that shows the presence of a second person, a young female, in his room during one night of the trip.
Schultz said three times during an 18-minute press gaggle on Thursday that the White House counsel's office found no 'corroborating' materials to support that document.
'Based on an absence of information corroborating that log, the White House Counsel concluded that there had been no misconduct by the White House advance team,' he said. 
He also claimed that on a separate occasion, one which the Post described as involving a different hotel, faulty log records had incorrectly implicated an innocent Secret Service agent.
Federal investigators obtained those Hilton records, showing an overnight guest was logged in to Dach's room on the night of April 4, 2012 at 12:02 a.m.
Registering extra guests is a common security practice for patrons of South American hotels where extra fees are charged when more than one person stays the night.
Dach wasn't charged a fee in this case, records show, as a benefit of his Hilton Honors frequent travel club membership.
The documents seen by Post reporters, corroborated by top hotel managers and security officers, include a photocopy of the young female guest's government-issued ID card. Making such copies protects hotels' management in case a paying customer is accused later of consorting with an underage streetwalker.
The Post confirmed that federal investigators learned from hotel staff that Dach and two other Americans – a Secret Service agent and a White House military staffer – had overnight guests that night. 
Those investigators' records include Dach's room number, 513, which matches the number on his hotel bill. 
Dach's father Leslie, who once leveraged Wal-Mart's brand to put a shine on first lady Michelle Obama's 'Let's Move!' wellness campaign, now works for the Department of Health and Human Services in a 'senior counselor' role that puts him in the chain of command implementing the Obamacare law.
While running the big-box behemoth's sprawling government affairs program, he launched the company's 'Global Women's Economic Empowerment Initiative.'
A representative for the Dach family did not respond to requests for comment about the prostitution episode, known in government circles as 'hookergate,' and about the potential role of nepotism in Jonathan Dach's hiring.
But Richard A. Sauber, an attorney whose client base is heavy on targets of government investigations, told the Post that Jonathan denies any involvement in the hooker scandal, and claimed no one connected to the Dachs attempted to obtain favorable treatment for him.
'The underlying allegations about any inappropriate conduct by Jonathan Dach in Cartagena are utterly and completely false,' Sauber said. 'In addition, neither he nor anyone acting on his behalf ever contacted the DHS IG’s office about its report.' 

THE DONOR AND THE JOHN: Leslie and Jonathan Dach in Barack Obama's inner circle 

Leslie Dach, a wealthy career political operative who helmed Wal-Mart's lobbying until last year, is now a senior counselor at the Department of Health and Human Services.
He put nearly $24,000 in the Democratic coffers that helped elect President Barack Obama in 2008, after contributing $2,300 to his rival Hillary Clinton during the hotly contested primary season.
At Wal-Mart, he partnered with the White House to promote the first lady's 'Let's Move!' health initiative 
Dach's history is all politics. A one-time campaign advance man for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, he rose through the Democratic Party ranks to become communications director for Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis's crash-and-burn 1988 presidential campaign.
In all, he has worked on seven presidential campaigns for Democrats, including serving as the party's program manager for its 2000 campaign, when Al Gore was anointed – for a time – as Bill Clinton's successor.
In 2004, as the Democrats struggled to put back the pieces following then-Senator John Kerry's loss to President George W. Bush, the party paid Dach $43,000 in consulting fees. 
Dach's son Jonathan is a 28-year-old State Department staffer in the Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues who cut his political teeth as a campaign operative in 2008.
The younger Dach latched on to the Obama movement as a Yale University student – he following his father there as a legacy enrollee – volunteering for event staff duties during the future president's campaign travel.
After the victory, Jonathan made $494 in donations to Obama's 2009 inaugural committee. 
He came back to politics as his college years ran out, volunteering as travel staff for the Democratic National Committee in April and May 2010.
DNC records show the party reimbursed him for $1,273 in travel and meal costs during those months before he returned to Yale as a law student.
He was similarly a volunteer on the infamous Cartagena trip, accepting expense reimbursements but no salary as he legally entertained a lady-of-the-evening.
The DNC did pay him $10,658 for two months' work in 2012, however, as Obama angled for a second White House term.
The Post reported that the 2012 hooker scandal, which cost a handful of Secret Service agents their jobs, also snared the younger Dach. He was 25 and a Yale University law student when he went to Cartagena. 
Federal investigators obtained Hilton hotel records that showed an overnight guest was logged in to Dach's room on the night of April 4, 2012 at 12:02 a.m.
Registering extra guests is a common security practice for patrons of South American hotels where extra fees are charged when more than one person stays the night.
Dach wasn't charged in this case, records show, as a benefit of his Hilton Honors frequent travel club membership. 
The documents seen by Post reporters, corroborated by top hotel managers and security officers, include a photocopy of a young female guest's government-issued ID card. Making such copies protects hotels' management in case a paying customer is accused later of consorting with an underage streetwalker.
The Post confirmed that federal investigators learned from hotel staff that Dach and two other Americans – a Secret Service agent and a White House military staffer – had overnight guests that night. 
Those investigators' records include Dach's room number, 513, which matches the number on his hotel bill. 
The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, which oversees investigations into the Secret Service, learned weeks later that a Secret Service agent had seen Dach in the Cartagena hotel with a woman he thought was a prostitute.
And the woman whose ID was attached to Dach's hotel record had a name that matched that of a female who advertised her services online as a hooker during the Summit of the Americas, the event President Obama attended.
24-year-old Colombian prostitute Dania Suarez was at the center of the Secret Service scandal when it first broke, but it's unclear whether Dach hired her or a different lady of the evening
24-year-old Colombian prostitute Dania Suarez was at the center of the Secret Service scandal when it first broke, but it's unclear whether it was she who registered as an overnight guest in the room where Dach was staying
When the DHS probe turned up Dach's name name a week after the trip, the lead investigator was told by his superiors to bury the information. It's not clear if anyone at the White House directed the lead inspector general to put on the brakes.
David Nieland told U.S. Senate investigators running their own parallel probe that he was ordered 'to withhold and alter certain information in the report of investigation because it was potentially embarrassing to the administration,' the Post reported, quoting Senate aides.
When he and his colleagues questioned how the investigation was being handled, Nieland reportedly said, they were placed on administrative leave and removed from the report's chain of command. 
The April 2012 Cartagena trip was a typical advance mission to prepare security and communications during the week before a visit by President Obama in April 2012 to meet with 33 regional leaders. 
The president's personal protection detail became the butt of jokes after the trip, however, when reports surfaced that a Secret Service agent had argued with 24-year-old prostitute Dania Suarez over her fee. 
The White House, according to the Post, investigated and then dismissed the Secret Service's conclusion – based on the hotel records – that one of its own aides, Dach, was involved.
That decision was made after then-White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler interviewed the young staffer twice and trusted his claim that he had done nothing wrong.
The Post reported that Dach was quickly questioned and cleared, in part because he wasn't technically a government employee and because prostitution is legal in Cartagena.
Leslie Dach (left) leveraged his relationship with the first family to link Wal-Mart's brand with Michelle Obama's healthy eating initiatives
Leslie Dach (left) leveraged his relationship with the first family to link Wal-Mart's brand with Michelle Obama's healthy eating initiatives
President Obama's administration is facing new criticism after charges surfaced that a damning report linking an aide to the 2012 prostitution scandal was put on ice so it wouldn't be embarrassing before an election
President Obama's administration is facing new criticism after charges surfaced that a damning report linking an aide to the 2012 prostitution scandal was put on ice so it wouldn't be embarrassing before an election
Dach, like other young advance staffers, had his travel expenses covered but was not on the administration's payroll at the time. 
Ruemmler, now in private law practice, is on a short list of possible replacements for outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
In all, about a dozen Secret Service officers, agents and supervisors were implicated in the Colombia scandal. Eight were forced out and three were cleared of serious misconduct.
Republican members of Congress were quick to cast blame on Thursday.
Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley said in a statement that the White House's 'assurances' during and after the hooker scandal 'are just part of a pattern of deception by this administration in an effort to save the White House from embarrassment.'
'A weekend investigation with a predetermined outcome doesn’t meet the smell test,' he said.
Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz told a Fox News Channel audience that he was shocked to learn where Jonathan Dach ended up.
'He's now working on global women's issues – the Office of Global Women's issues at the State Department,' a stammering Chaffetz said. 
'I just – it really is offensive to the morale of the Secret Service, the men and women who served. They got reprimanded. They got fired.'
Dach quickly made most of his social media accounts private on Wednesday night, but his Tumblr account, titled ''Let's Get Dangerous,' remained online.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz insisted to the Post on Wednesday that the Obama administration never interfered with the investigation conducted by Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General.
'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,' Schultz told the newspaper.
Schultz emailed several reporters late in the evening, insisting that 'there's nothing to this story.' 
Dach (left) and other campaign aides attended Obama's inauguration in 2009
Dach (left) and other campaign aides attended Obama's inauguration in 2009
Tweeted reactions to Dach's alleged behavior and his new job posting ranged from open mouths to closed fists
Tweeted reactions to Dach's alleged behavior and his new job posting ranged from open mouths to closed fists
The White House's top spokesman quickly tried to put out a PR fire on Wednesday by claiming the story was old news, but his effort did little to slow down the media feeding frenzy
The White House's top spokesman quickly tried to put out a PR fire on Wednesday by claiming the story was old news, but his effort did little to slow down the media feeding frenzy
He and White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest furiously spun the Post report Wednesday night, claiming on Twitter that it was old news.
'Supposed WaPo "exclusive" was previously reported by AP, CBS, ABC, Politico, The Hill & others - 2 years ago,' Earnest tweeted.
But that story never explored the possibility that the White House engaged in a cover-up by pushing the Homeland Security investigation to bury facts until after Obama was re-elected.
The Secret Service itself is in turmoil and won't welcome more scandal as the details of hookergate are retold two years later.
Julia Pierson, the service's first female director, resigned last month following a trio of scandals involving President Obama's personal protection detail.
In one episode, it took agents several days to learn that a gunman had fired shots at the White House and broken an upstairs window.
Then a mentally disturbed military veteran scaled the White House's outer fence, sprinted across the lawn and entered the presidential mansion through an unlocked door, foiling the service's legendary security.
Separately, it emerged that a private security guard unknown to the Secret Service got on an elevator with President Obama during his visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The president's bodyguards weren't aware the man was carrying a gun.

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