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
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.
+7
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
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 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
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
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
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.
Share or comment on this article
Printer-friendly version
PDF version
