Politics, Prostitution, Sex, Sex Scandals, Women's Issues

In Further Defense Of Jonathan Dach, The Yale Law Grad Dragged Into A Sex Scandal

A prominent accuser of Jonny Dach turns out to have a prostitution problem of his own.

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I recently wrote a defense of Jonathan Dach, the Yale Law School graduate and State Department lawyer who was accused of patronizing a Colombian prostitute. Dach has forcefully denied the allegations, and people who know him find the idea of him hiring a prostitute in Colombia to be inconceivable.

Not everyone was persuaded by my defense, however. In conservative quarters, my argument — or at least my “he’s kinda cute” point, made somewhat tongue in cheek — was met with significant skepticism.

New revelations, however, make the case against Jonathan Dach look more shaky than ever — and even conservative outlets are raising questions….

Here’s a report from Howard Kurtz of Fox News, making critical comments about his former employer, the Washington Post:

[A] scoop by the New York Times has an extra bit of resonance: It casts doubt on an earlier exclusive by the Washington Post that relied heavily on the now-suspect source.

As the Times reported [on Wednesday]: “The investigator who led the Department of Homeland Security’s internal review of the Secret Service’s 2012 prostitution scandal quietly resigned in August after he was implicated in his own incident involving a prostitute, according to current and former department officials.”

It was David Nieland who, according to the Post, complained that he had been pressured into withholding his findings about the prostitution mess until after the 2012 election. His credibility, to say the least, has been heavily eroded.

That same Washington Post story drew flak for naming a 25-year-old White House volunteer, Jonathan Dach, as having had a prostitute in his room in Colombia, despite a denial from his lawyer and a dispute over the evidence.

What did the Post know about Nieland allegedly patronizing a prostitute, and when did they know it? Post officials didn’t comment to Kurtz (and didn’t respond to my inquiry either), but they did defend themselves to Michael Calderone of the Huffington Post:

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“We fully stand by our story, which relied on multiple investigative records and multiple sources,” [executive editor Marty] Baron said in an email Thursday to The Huffington Post. “It is false to suggest that the story relied disproportionately on any one individual.

“The story focused on what the White House knew and the thoroughness of its investigation,” Baron continued. “Absolutely nothing in the story needs to be corrected. The story was perfectly clear about what was known and not known.”

Baron declined to comment on whether the Post was aware of allegations against former investigator David Nieland before publishing the Oct. 8 report, which relied significantly on Nieland’s findings and included his claims of being retaliated against for raising questions about the White House’s handling of the scandal.

Dach’s lawyer, Richard Sauber, argues that the Nieland revelations demonstrate “just how thoroughly wrong The Washington Post has been.” More specifically:

The Post story which ignored repeated denials and instead relied on anonymous sources and unsupported allegations just had its last legs shot out from under it. The Post relied heavily on Mr. Nieland’s accusations that he was retaliated against for truth telling when he was actually suspended after he circulated photographs that he had taken of a female intern’s feet.

Ah yes, that’s right — before Nieland’s alleged August 2014 prostitution incident, he had been suspended back in 2013 for two weeks after circulating pictures he had taken of a female intern’s feet. He claimed it was a joke, but the intern probably didn’t find it funny: she asked to be transferred out of the office after the episode.

What was the whole point, then, of L’Affaire Dach? Two inside-the-Beltway sources of ours, one a Republican and one Democrat, separately suggested to us that it was designed to torpedo the attorney-general prospects of former White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler. If the controversy over Dach, a White House volunteer at the time of his trip to Cartagena, made it look like Ruemmler couldn’t keep her own house in order or engaged in a cover-up to protect the child of a big Democratic donor (Leslie Dach), it would make it less likely for President Obama to nominate Ruemmler as AG — or, at the very least, one more thing to grill her about during confirmation hearings.

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If the Dach controversy was ginned up by opponents of an Attorney General Ruemmler, well, congratulations, folks — you succedeed in getting Ruemmler to withdraw. It’s too bad, though, that you had to sacrifice a bright young lawyer’s reputation to do it.

Law Blogger Makes Sexy Excuse For Yale Grad [The Mirror / Daily Caller]
NY Times story on disgraced prostitution prober raises journalistic questions [Fox News]
Washington Post Editor Defends Secret Service Report Amid Questions About Source [Huffington Post]

Earlier: In Defense Of Jonathan Dach
Yale Law Students Love Hookers

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