Are they? The scandal involved Secret Service agents who hired hookers while in Cartagena, Colombia on an advance team for the President. Several agents got disciplinary action, including Gregory Stokes, who is on suspension. He now says that the Secret Service got railroaded, in part to deflect attention from a couple of other participants:

Asked what that means, Stokes said, “The primary reason for me talking to you here today is to make it clear that we have been denied due process. We were supposed to have had a three-person final adjudication by the Department of Homeland Security. That proceeding has been delayed. In my opinion and the — in the opinion of other agents in this situation, they are trying to starve us out. They are trying to put us in a sort of limbo in hopes that we’ll quit and go away.”

When the scandal first broke, the agency was under fire. So the Secret Service launched an internal investigation. But Congress demanded an independent probe, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General Charles K. Edwards promised he’d deliver one. Edwards said at the time, “I owe it to the secretary and to Congress for me to do an independent review and be transparent and come back with the recommendations and report to you what else can be done.” …

For Stokes, it is not just that he and the other agents are in hot water, it is about who he says is not in hot water. Stokes said he believes the DHS inspector general left two people out of the final report: a Secret Service executive and a volunteer White House staffer who was also the son of a powerful Washington lobbyist. Stokes says there was evidence that they also had prostitutes in their rooms at the very hotel where the president was going to stay.

The White House, Secret Service and DHS say those allegations were thoroughly investigated and were unfounded. But Stokes claims at least one investigator thought otherwise. Stokes said, “I even became aware that the lead investigator — a man of high integrity, in my opinion — was placed on administrative leave for refusing to redact or omit portions of his original report to the satisfaction of the inspector general.”

“So the lead investigator wrote up a report with the facts as he understood them, submitted it and they sent it back and said, ‘Change the facts?'” Miller asked.

Stokes replied, “That’s my understanding.”