KingAlthough he is still pressing his inquiry in to what a dozen U.S. Secret Service agents and officers did last month while dispatched to Cartagena, Colombia, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said he’d rather not meet with the prostitute in the middle of the controversy.
King, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said Sunday that while he is still committed to investigating allegations that the Secret Service agents—nine of whom are no longer with the agency—visited brothels in the coastal city and brought back several sex workers to their hotel rooms, he does not need to hear directly from Dania Londono Suarez, who sparked the scandal after complaining to local police that one of the agents attempted to pay her far less than her $800 fee for an evening’s company.
In a statement released by the Homeland Security Committee, King said:
I have declined a request to meet with one of the female foreign nationals involved in the Secret Service misconduct in Colombia. Late last Thursday, an attorney for Dania Londono Suarez contacted Committee staff and requested that I meet with his client in my office. While such a meeting—and the inevitable circus atmosphere surrounding it—would no doubt be of great interest to the media covering this story, a meeting with her is simply not necessary at this time for the Committee to conduct a serious and thorough investigation. For now, I have directed my staff to communicate with and gather information about the misconduct from the woman via her attorney.
Last week, Suarez started giving interviews to media in both her country and the United States, including an appearance on NBC’s Today in which she suggested that the agent who brought her back to his hotel left classified documents lying out in the open. “If I was a terrorist, I would have been able to do a thousand things,” she told a Colombian radio station, according to the New York Daily News.
King’s statement goes on to say that while the Long Island-based lawmaker has no interest in bringing Suarez before his panel, she was approached by the Secret Service’s internal investigation last week while in Madrid, Spain. But his foreboding about a “circus” environment might be well-taken. In addition to hitting the interview circuit, Suarez has claimed that she has enough dirt on the Secret Service agents to merit a book deal.
