White House never said aide was involved in Secret Service scandal

The cover page of a 2013 Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s report on the Secret Service’s Colombia prostitution scandal and other problems points out that a member of the White House advance operation “may have been involved” in the scandal.

The DHS inspector general at the time said investigating whether any other non-Secret Service employees – either White House or members of the military — who might have been involved in the prostitute scandal fell outside the scope of its investigation. The DHS is the umbrella organization for the Secret Service.

Still, Charles Edwards, the acting inspector general at the time who was later forced out of the position, twice noted in his final report that a White House staffer may have been involved in the prostitution scandal.

“Although allegations related to the non-[Secret Service] personnel were outside the scope of the investigation, one of these employees is a Department of Defense employee affiliated with the White House Communication Agency and the other, whose employment status was not verified, may have been affiliated with the White House advance operation,” Edwards said in the cover letter.

The IG report itself also mentioned the possibility that a White House staffer could have been involved.

“Based on our interviews and reviews of records, we identified 13 [Secret Service] employees, one White House Communications Agency employee (an office with the Department of Defense), and one reported member of the White House staff and/or advance team who had personal encounters with female Colombia nationals consistent with the misconduct reported,” the report said.

Obama administration officials never publicly acknowledged that the Secret Service believed that a 25-year-old White House staffer was involved in the 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia.

The Secret Service believed they had evidence that a young White House aide who served as a volunteer advance worker and was a student at the time was involved in the inappropriate drunken partying that involved some agents’ hiring prostitutes, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The Washington Post late Wednesday first reported the staffer’s name and his denials, through an attorney, that he hired a prostitute.

Then-White House press secretary Jay Carney at the time said what he knew at the time was that the incident did not “involve anything but the agents and the military personnel.”

According to the Post, the Secret Service provided evidence pointing to the aide’s potential involvement on April 20, the same day Carney made the comment to reporters.

The Post does not say whether agency officials provided the information to the White House before or after Carney made the comment, but the paper notes that White House lawyers huddled with Secret Service officials all weekend poring over documents, including hotel logs showing women staying in certain hotel rooms of those on the trip.

The lawyers and top Secret Service officials were trying to figure out how to respond to the prostitution scandal and exactly who was involved and what took place.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz said the White House conducted an internal review of the prostitution scandal and “did not identify any inappropriate behavior on the part of the White House advance team.”

“At the time, White House counsel requested the Secret Service send over any information related to White House personnel engaging in inappropriate conduct – and indeed that is how the hotel log emerged, an analogous version of which proved to falsely implicate another agent who was subsequently cleared,” he said.

Some agents passed polygraph tests asking questions about whether they paid women for sex, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Schultz also denied suggestions that the White House interfered with the inspector general’s investigation.