A Senate panel is investigating whether former Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano’s close allies pushed the department’s inspector general to tread lightly in its investigation of the prostitution scandal involving the U.S. Secret Service.
Government sources familiar with the probe say Senate investigators are looking into John Sandweg, the secretary’s former general counsel whom she recently promoted to acting chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and her former chief of staff, Noah Kroloff, who, shortly after the 2012 prostitution scandal subsided, formed a private consulting firm with Mark Sullivan, who retired in March as head of the Secret Service.
The sources say the Senate panel received information that suggests Mr. Sandweg pressured Homeland Security Inspector General Charles Edwards to slow-walk his final report until after the November presidential election.
The investigation was spurred by whistleblower accusations that Mr. Edwards was “susceptible to political pressure” in issuing a favorable investigative report on the Secret Service, according to a June 27 letter to him from the panel, and that his investigators “changed and withheld” information that would have been damaging to the service.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee on contracting oversight, and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the panel’s ranking Republican, initiated the probe in May after receiving whistleblower complaints.
Via: Washington Times
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