Washington Post journalist Carol Leonnig said that the White House's spin on the Cartagena prostitution scandal was "demonstrably false."
Leonnig's report, co-authored with David Nakamura and published Thursday, indicated that senior White House aides knew about the scandal despite claims to the contrary from administration officials at the time.
"The White House has said a lot of different things over the last two years about why a White House staffer likely wasn't involved and why their review was very thorough and they found nothing to it," Leonnig said. "This issue of mistaken identity is a red herring. It's demonstratively false to say the only evidence involving this guy was that a woman had signed herself into this room."
After reviewing records, Leonnig and Nakamura found that the inspector general investigating the case had altered and stalled reports with "sensitive" information at the request of members of the administration.
"That acting inspector general refused to turn over any of his internal correspondence, so the senate investigation said, 'Hey, we looked at this; we couldn't figure out if the inspector general was retaliating against people who questioned him,'" Leonnig said. "But this inspector general resigned three days before he was supposed to come before a hearing of lawmakers and answer questions about this."