The White House Is not a Royal Court; Mr. Obama Is not a King

The Washington Post got it right today : "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 revealed." ~~~~~ A Secret Service prostitution scandal during a pre-election 2012 Obama trip to Cartagena, Colombia, led to the firing of more than a half-dozen Secret Service agents. At that time, White House officials denied that anyone on the White House team was involved with prostitutes, and officials denied it again Thursday. But the Associated Press is now reporting that a key lawmaker, Representative Jason Chaffetz, is asking new questions about a possible coverup, saying that there is compelling evidence that a volunteer member of the White House advance team had a prostitute in his hotel room during the trip to Colombia two years ago. The Utah Republican, who heads the national security subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, says information he's learned from whistleblowers - along with details in the Washington Post - amount to "thorough and compelling" evidence. Chaffetz told the AP that he wants the White House to have the opportunity to respond and address the allegations. In Thursday's development, the Post reported evidence implicating a White House advance team member in the prostitution scandal involving Secret Service agents in Colombia in 2012. White House officials have denied involvement by anyone on their team, but the Post story said White House officials were informed at the time. ~~~~~ Also on Thursday, Fox News reported that a former Secret Service agent attacked the Obama administration for a "protect the crown approach" during the 2012 Colombia prostitution scandal. He accused the White House of protecting the President by "readily throw[ing]…the people who would protect [Obama] with their lives under the bus." Don Bongino, who is running for Congress in Maryland as a Republican, told Fox News : "everybody on the ground knew there was a White House staff member involved," referring to the prostitute scandal. According to a "smoking gun" report in the Washington Post, the scandal's lead investigator told Senate staffers he was asked to withhold evidence and stall the report on the scandal for political reasons. "We were directed at the time...to delay the report of the investigation until after the 2012 election," David Nieland, the lead investigator for the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general’s office, told Senate staffers, according to the Post. This caused former Secret Service agent Bongino's outrage. He cited recent security breaches at the White House that ended with the resignation of Secret Service Director Julia Pierson. Bongino said : "Listen, this is a protect-the-crown approach by this administration, and it has been, frankly, a grotesque pattern of behavior...[the administration] so readily throws the rank-and-file members of the government, including the people who would protect him with their lives, under the bus....they will protect the crown no matter what." ~~~~~ As we have come to expect, the Obama administration denied any coverup. But the Post reported that the White House counsel at the time, Kathryn Ruemmler, was twice given the information about allegations involving a White House advance team member in Colombia who partied with a prostitute, and that “each time, she and other presidential aides conducted an interview with the advance team member and concluded that he had done nothing wrong.” While two dozen Secret Service and military personnel assigned to protecting the President were disciplined for the Cartagena incident, there was no reprimand for the White House aide. Bongino said he could accept differing degrees of punishment, but he worried about the disproportionate impact on those Secret Service agents fired : "I had friends and family involved in this. It's a sensitive topic for me. But these guys' lives are over. It's done. It's finished. They were humiliated in public. Some of their wives have left them. They've lost their homes. Yet, the White House staffer in this gets promoted for, what, women's studies or women's issues while there's supposedly a war on women….Here's a question...that the White House, someone. needs to ask. Was this [White House aide] polygraphed? Cause every Secret Service agent was. And if he wasn't and you’re just taking his word for it, why wasn't the same courtesy given to the agents? This is unbelievable." ~~~~~ Bongino also said that authority over the Secret Service should "absolutely" be transferred back to the Treasury Department because “the Department of Homeland Security shift has been a disaster, go back to Treasury, they left the Secret Service alone to operate on a budget that was only about two-thirds of what it is now." And key members of Congress are doing just that - weighing changes to the battered Secret Service, including moving it out of the Homeland Security Department and putting it back in the Treasury Department, its traditional home before it was moved to DHS after 9/11. There is also talk of taking away its non-core missions. Some current and former Secret Service agents trace the decline of morale and performance at the agency to its move into DHS, which they say forced the well-functioning Secret Service into a huge, messy bureaucracy where it became management-heavy and had to compete for its budget with other law enforcement entities. The Secret Service was created in 1865 to investigate counterfeit currency and expanded to a presidential protection mission following the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. The agency has a staff of about 6,500 and an annual budget hovering around $1.5 billion - tiny compared to other Homeland Security entities - and it now also investigates credit card fraud and certain other financial crimes, probably too much for a small agency. ~~~~~ Dear readers, it is hard to believe that a President of the United States would punish his Secret Service corps for something that his own staff participated in, while letting the staff member go unpunished. That's just not how the American system works -- everyone is treated equally before the law and every individual is accountable for his or her actions. What happened in this case? We can only trust that Congress will unravel the puzzle. We would not want the Secret Service to walk free from what was obviously grossly inappropriate behavior in Cartagena in 2012. But America relies on the Secret Service to protect the President, his family and the White House. The Service also protects other key public figures. It needs to restore its pristine reputation so that America can once more trust the Secret Service to do its job with its usual professional efficiency. But America also needs to be reassured that the President and his White House staff act honorably and evenhandedly. The White House is not a royal court. The President is not a king. They should remember this as they seek to position, enhance and protect Mr. Obama's image. A healthy dose of law-abiding openness about what goes on around the President is sorely lacking and badly needed.