A prominent 2008 Obama campaign bundler who was rewarded with the ambassadorship to Belgium is once again the subject of controversy after a State Department whistleblower revealed that he was under investigation for soliciting prostitutes, including minors, in Brussels.
First reported yesterday by CBS News, the whistleblower disclosed eight cases in which senior officials manipulated or suppressed investigations of wrongdoing within the State Department.
One of those instances concerns Howard Gutman, who raised $775,000 for the 2008 Obama campaign and inauguration. According to the IG memo, Gutman "routinely ditched his protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children. ... The ambassador’s protective detail and the embassy’s surveillance detection team ... were well aware of the behavior."
Undersecretary of state for management Patrick Kennedy ordered the investigation closed, the whistleblower alleges. Gutman says the allegations are "baseless."
Gutman was previously in hot water over a controversial December 2011 speech in Brussels in which he argued that Muslim anti-Semitism is caused, and in part justified, by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
His remarks were made during a period of extraordinary public criticism of Israel by senior officials in the Obama administration, including by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Panetta. Gutman was condemned at the time by the Anti-Defamation League, the Emergency Committee for Israel, the Republican Jewish Coalition, and the National Jewish Democratic Council, among others.