Secret Service Scandal: White House Staff Not Involved, Counsel's Office Concludes

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney speaks during a daily briefing at the White House April 23, 2012 in Washington, DC. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON -- The White House says President Barack Obama's lawyers have concluded that no member of his White House staff engaged in improper conduct in Cartagena, Colombia.

Obama spokesman Jay Carney says the White House counsel's office undertook a review as due diligence, even though there were no specific allegations of misconduct against advance White House staff. The Secret Service and the Pentagon are conducting investigations into allegations that agents and military personnel consorted with prostitutes in advance of Obama's trip to the Summit of the Americas.

Last week, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, urged a broader investigation to include White House advance staff members, who help set up a presidential trip ahead of Obama's arrival, and personnel from the White House Communications Agency, who work for the U.S. military in support of the president.

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Comments

[patling13]

04:40 PM on 04/24/2012

Of course they weren't involved the WH said they weren't so the media will give them a pass.

[rneigh9880]

05:40 AM on 04/24/2012

Well if you have declared it over Jaybird, it must be true. Sound a bit like Nixon saying "I am not a crook". When sex and money are involved, the little head seems to run things more often than the big one. When its taxpayer money funding the little head, all bets are off.

[fairchilds]

12:39 AM on 04/24/2012

Amazing how many trolls there are on this thread. Must be because this is a 'sex-y' topic...

[cogwheel1]

12:00 AM on 04/24/2012

Obama's people said. It must be true.

[fairchilds]

12:33 AM on 04/24/2012

right. He would willingly compromise his own safety and his family's. Uh huh.

[tmmack2]

10:15 AM on 04/24/2012

cogwheels post must have been too difficult for you to understand. Obama's office says they looked into it for themselves and they weren't involved. Case closed! I wonder if the Bush office came out with the same story the media would just except it as fact? RIGHT...

[Iya Sapa Mato]

11:54 PM on 04/23/2012

As for other White House staff? Different hotel? We may hear about them at a later date. I am sure the rest of the big ontourage while off to these great destinations on all the vacations and government business. They were all in their rooms by 8 PM. You know early to bed, early to rise! Strictly business, like the GSA.

[xxjawmorexx]

11:42 PM on 04/23/2012

A huh sure I believe him, and I have a bridge in florida to sell also.

[eastriverKat]

11:14 PM on 04/23/2012

Seems that the Obama adminstration is going to keep quite and this too will pass. People will forget and fall in love with his fuzzy method of keeping America stupid, so they could vote for him.

[NoQuarter472]

10:19 PM on 04/23/2012

Why would they find anything of this administrations under the blanket work, just remember the Vince Foster cold case is now frozen. It falls with the ",,,I never had sex with that woman', the Pizza man and cigar afficionado.

[jrp1947]

09:44 PM on 04/23/2012

That is the biggest load of cra- i have ever heard. How many times has Obama and his staff been caught in lies while he has been president? They knew even if they were not directly partcipating. In my personal opinion I am sure this president and his staff can lie with the best of them and I am certain Clinton, Nixon, and Bush have nothing on this president when it comes to telling the big ones. All Obama has really shown us is he is not afraid to use the military to kill unlike the previous presidents. He had put us further in debt, spent far more money traveling and vacationing than any two presidents prior to him, and could care less about the "grey" Americans. The man has plenty of money for his programs but nothing for those that help Americans in general. Did his staff know? You bet they did.

[fairchilds]

12:32 AM on 04/24/2012

You are just repeating the pattern of misinformation that is cooked up by Fox News and the right wing extremists.
They do this and eejits like you just parrot it along.
FACT:
GW Bush spent more days on vacation than ANY other president.
He used Air Force One more on vacations than ANY other president.
His flights to his ranch in Crawford, TX cost the taxpayers over $20 million dollars.
Unlike the $4 million cost of President Obama's vacation (which included ALL transportation and accomodations for staff, family, media and security) the $20 million was for transporting just Bush himself.
At the rate of $56,800--$68,000 AN HOUR to fly Air Force One, Bush used that plan 77 times during his term.
So please don't keep repeating that stupidity that was cooked up to be a misleading, false misinformation campaign.
Don't just keep falling for it.
Do the research. Look up stuff before you just repeat it.

[razaminaz]

08:48 PM on 04/23/2012

It is sure comforting to know Obama's lawyers have decided Obama's staff had nothing to with or knew nothing about this fiasco. If the agents were off and sober and prostitution is legal there, what's the problem? This is just more dust thrown in the air to confuse the public and give the congress more reasons to make up useless commitees and waste tax payer dollars.

[meanstr]

07:19 PM on 04/23/2012

It is the duty of the Director of the Secret Service to step down, it was on his watch that the morals of so many in the agency was that tainted , but sad to say I feel the morals of so many in our government needs to be Questioned It now seems we condone all kinds of killing in the middle east by any group that wishes to destroy a government when we do not like that government .Lybia is a good example of that we helped France put together a group of rebels an kept saying we do not know who they are and bombed city after city into submission killing thousands to kill one person.

[fairchilds]

12:38 AM on 04/24/2012

Hey, you can be fired for malfeasance or a criminal act. Those agents who compromised the security they were responsible for were fired, as they should have been.
The rest of this 'investigation' is a political witch hunt.
If YOU were a business manager, and some of your employees while at a convention consorted with prostitutes, it would be perfectly proper for you to fire them.
Where does anyone get off demanding that YOU step down, though?
Losing your job because of some tut-tutting 'moralist' is reprehensible.
Shame on you.

[Boatnmaniac]

10:12 AM on 04/24/2012

Well said.

[jhooperaa]

07:07 PM on 04/23/2012

So let me get this straight. We investigated ourselves and we did nothing wrong. If this was the Bush Whitehouse the media would be calling for a special prosecutor. Instead the Obama run media just says move along. Nothing wrong here.

[jwyola]

07:03 PM on 04/23/2012

More likely than not, we are at the beginning of this story rather that at its end. It would not suprise if the White House. along the way, will have to do some serious backtracking, at which, of course, it is expert.

[pgrlights]

06:29 PM on 04/23/2012

Republicans just seem to get over the fact that their party supplied America with a "Felon" ie: Nixon. they blame the Dems for almost prosecuting him and routing him from office. Get over it repub's, your whole party is full of felons.

[RetiredLtCPD]

08:25 PM on 04/23/2012

Do you even remember Watergate? Nixon was universally hated.

Care to discuss Billy Clinton, only the second President ever impeached?

[pgrlights]

09:50 PM on 04/23/2012

He was never ran out of office.Nixon was a national criminal

[razaminaz]

08:50 PM on 04/23/2012

What about Clinton getting impeached by one house?

[pgrlights]

09:49 PM on 04/23/2012

almost impeached out of office? only in horse shoes

[Boatnmaniac]

10:25 AM on 04/24/2012

Being impeached is not a conviction. It's more like a Grand Jury decision that there's grounds for a trial.

Impeachment proceedings are always done only by the House. If the House votes to impeach, then the Senate holds "jury" to decide guilt or innocence.

The House vote to impeach was largely a partisan vote that barely passed.

Only 45 Senators (out of 100) voted he was guilty....not anywhere near enough to remove Clinton from office.

[Clifford McKinstry]

06:13 PM on 04/23/2012

It is so obvious that the Repugteacans are in trouble that they will now blame the next rain storm on the president they hate because is is bringing the country back from the swamp that the last president got it into. Well just keep it up, because you will have another four years to cry about it in November, when both houses AND the President are under Democratic control.

[razaminaz]

08:51 PM on 04/23/2012

Then you better learn to survive in the wilderness because there will be no America as we know it.

[NoQuarter472]

10:28 PM on 04/23/2012

Please hold your breath until that happens. A laugh a minute with you drones.