The Justice Department intends to interview two CIA officers for its review of the origins of the Russia investigation.
U.S. Attorney John Durham’s team wants to talk to at least one senior counterintelligence official and a senior analyst who examined Russia’s role in meddling in the 2016 election, according to the New York Times.
Although formal requests have not yet been submitted, CIA Director Gina Haspel informed senior officials that her agency will cooperate, but will work to ensure that sources, methods, and intelligence provided by allies would be protected.
Attorney General William Barr tasked Durham, a U.S. attorney from Connecticut, with leading the inquiry focused on the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into President Trump’s campaign, which the FBI began in the summer of 2016.
American officials say Barr is interested in understanding how the CIA coordinated with the FBI and how the agency came to its conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the order to sow discord in the election to help Trump and undermine his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
The review is not a criminal inquiry, but should Durham find criminal activity he can take prosecutorial action. Top CIA officials are said to be anxious over the federal prosecutor’s efforts.
The Justice Department’s examination of the early stages of the counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s campaign has been cheered by Republicans and criticized by Democrats. After Trump granted Barr sweeping powers to declassify secret information and instructed a handful of agencies to cooperate with his investigation, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff panned the effort as a “disturbing” scheme to politicize intelligence.
A DOJ letter written to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., outlining the scope of its investigation said the review is “broad in scope and multifaceted” and includes a look at actions both by the U.S. government and by foreigners.
He added that it “was a very personal, very warm, very nice letter.” Ah, love! And as if he were eying North Korea for a new Trump resort, the president declared: “North Korea has tremendous potential, and he’ll be there.” Kim is “the one that feels that more than anybody,” and underscoring just how wise the dear leader is, Trump concluded: “He totally gets it.”
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, said he is “glad this is finally over” after speaking to the Senate Intelligence Committee for around three hours on Wednesday.
Trump Jr. said he was happy to clarify answers from an interview with the panel’s staff in 2017, but told reporters, “I don’t think I changed any of what I said because there was nothing to change.”
Senators wanted to discuss the answers Trump Jr. gave in that 2017 interview, as well as the answers he gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee in a separate interview behind closed doors that year. He appeared in response to a subpoena from the panel’s Republican chairman, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, as part of the committee’s investigation into Russian interference.
The president’s former lawyer Michael Cohen told a House committee in February that before the presidential election he had briefed Trump Jr. approximately 10 times about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. But Trump Jr. told the Judiciary panel he was only “peripherally aware” of the real estate proposal.
The panel was also interested in talking to him about other topics as well, including a 2016 campaign meeting in Trump Tower in New York with a Russian lawyer that captured the interest of special counsel Robert Mueller. Emails leading up to the meeting promised dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent. Mueller’s report, released in April, examined the meeting but found insufficient evidence to charge anyone with a crime.
Trump Jr. would not discuss the details of the Senate interview, but said he was happy to comply if clarification was needed.
“I am glad this is finally over, we’re able to put some final clarity on that, and I think the committee understands that,” he said. Asked as he walked away if he is worried about perjury, Trump Jr. said “not at all.”
He also noted that Cohen is “serving time right now for lying to these very investigative bodies.”
Cohen pleaded guilty last year to campaign finance violations, lying to Congress and other crimes. He is currently serving a three-year prison sentence.
Trump Jr. said “I am glad this is finally over, we’re able to put some final clarity on that, and I think the committee understands that.” Asked as he walked away if he is worried about perjury, Trump Jr. said “not at all.”
Trump Jr.’s testimony comes as the Intelligence Committee continues its two-year investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Some Republicans are becoming restless with the topic, and Burr received considerable blowback from colleagues over the subpoena. But he told fellow senators that Trump Jr. had backed out of an interview twice, forcing the committee to act.
Neither Burr nor the top Democrat on the panel, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, would comment on the interview as they left.
The president said in May he believed his son was being treated poorly.
“It’s really a tough situation because my son spent, I guess, over 20 hours testifying about something that Mueller said was 100 percent OK and now they want him to testify again,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I don’t know why. I have no idea why. But it seems very unfair to me.”
It was the first known subpoena of a member of the president’s immediate family, and some Republicans went so far last month as to suggest Trump Jr. shouldn’t comply.
Burr’s home state colleague, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., tweeted, “It’s time to move on & start focusing on issues that matter to Americans.” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a GOP member of the panel, said he understood Trump Jr.’s frustration. Cornyn’s Texas colleague, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, said there was “no need” for the subpoena.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has defended Burr, saying “none of us tell Chairman Burr how to run his committee.”
Still, McConnell made it clear that he is eager to be finished with the probe, which began in early 2017.
It’s uncertain when the intelligence panel will issue a final report. Burr told The Associated Press last month that he hopes to be finished with the investigation by the end of the year.
Sen. Harris vows to indict Trump if elected in 2020; reaction and analysis on ‘The Five,’
Fox News’ host Greg Gutfeld dismissed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris‘ comments saying her DOJ would have “no choice” but to prosecute President Trump comparing her to a desperate man trying to meet women at a bar.
“That’s what candidates are like right now. They are the desperate guy at the bar who will say anything to get your number. It’s just to get some kind of media spotlight. And they are not trying to appeal to America. Because America doesn’t care,” Gutfeld said on “The Five” Wednesday.
Sen. Harris, D-Calif., in a newly released NPR interview, said she believes the only reason former Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not recommend prosecuting Trump was because of the Justice Department’s policy against indicting a sitting president. The senator said that once out of office, Trump would be subject to charges and that the DOJ should pursue them.
“I believe that they would have no choice and that they should, yes,” Harris said on the NPR Politics Podcast.
“The Greg Gutfeld Show” host said he “didn’t believe” Harris and pointed out that Democratic presidential candidates are “being tricked” into taking hard-left points of view.
“They’re being tricked into thinking there is no lane for moderates. Like everybody has to go this way and actually, America actually likes a moderate. You don’t have to be a rabid flame thrower. I don’t believe her for a second. It’s interesting that she has to do this because she is not taking off. And I thought that she would have taken off,” Gutfeld said.
Fox Business’ Kennedy added that she wished Mueller “picked a side” so that everyone could move on from the issue.
“Do you know what would have been nice if we weren’t left in this expanded gray area which is what the Mueller report gave us. I really do wish he would have picked a side and I wish he would have pressed the issue,” Kennedy said. “And if the president had done something so bad that was chargeable, if it were a civilian, then he should have put that in there.”
Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.
The House has approved a resolution that will make it easier to file lawsuits against the Trump administration when officials defy subpoenas.
The legislation passed 229-191, along party lines.
It empowers Democrats to take legal action to enforce subpoenas against Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Don McGahn. It also allows committee chairmen to take future legal action without a vote of the full House, as long as they have approval from a bipartisan group of House leaders.
Tuesday’s vote reflects an evolving strategy for Democrats, who have moved toward lawsuits and away from criminal contempt as they investigate President Donald Trump and his administration.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats “need answers on the questions left unanswered” by special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia report.
President Trump insisted that Russia didn’t help him get elected, one day after special counsel Robert Mueller spoke publicly for the first time. USA TODAY
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would likely take information about his 2020 election rivals from foreign adversaries, such as Russia and China.
During an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Trump was asked whether his campaign would accept information from foreign governments in this upcoming election or turn it over to the FBI.
“I think maybe you do both,” Trump said, adding that if Norway had information on an opponent, he thinks he would want to hear it. “I think you might want to listen, there’s nothing wrong with listening.”
When asked whether he would want that type of interference in the 2020 election, Trump said: “It’s not an interference.”
“They have information. I think I’d take it,” Trump continued. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI.”
Intelligence officials have noted that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Former special counsel Robert Mueller, who conducted a probe into Moscow’s effort to interfere in the election, noted in his 448-page report that Russia’s interference was done in an effort to elect Trump.
The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., on Wednesday met with lawmakers to discuss a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, where he’s previously said he believed he was getting damaging information on then-Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
The president’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, has also recently declined to say whether he would call the FBI if he were invited to another meeting with Russia, like the one at Trump Tower.
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President Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner won’t say if he would call the FBI if Russia tried to contact the campaign by email. (June 3) AP, AP
Trump criticized earlier reports that said his son could be charged over the meeting.
“I was reading that my son was going to go to jail,” the president said. “This is a good young man, that he was going to go to jail.”
When asked whether Trump Jr. should have gone to the FBI, he said, “Put yourself in [that] position?”
“You’re a congressman, somebody comes up, and says, ‘Hey, I have information on your opponent.’ You call the FBI?”
“I’ve seen a lot of things over my life, I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI,” he continued. “This is somebody that said we had information on your opponent. ‘Oh, let me call the FBI.’ Give me a break. Life doesn’t work that way.”
Trump also criticized FBI Director Christopher Wray’s comments during a congressional testimony last month in which he told lawmakers that “the FBI would want to know about” any foreign election meddling.
“The FBI director is wrong,” he said.
“They come up with oppo research, ‘Oh, let’s call the FBI,'” Trump continued. “The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it.
“But you go and talk honestly to congressmen, they all do it. They’ve always had. And that’s the way it is, it’s called oppo research.”
President Donald Trump may not alert the FBI if foreign governments offered damaging information against his 2020 rivals during the upcoming presidential race, he said, despite the deluge of investigations stemming from his campaign’s interactions with Russians during the 2016 campaign.
Asked by ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos in the Oval Office on Wednesday whether his campaign would accept such information from foreigners — such as China or Russia — or hand it over the FBI, Trump said, “I think maybe you do both.”
“I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening,” Trump continued. “If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent’ — oh, I think I’d want to hear it.”
President Trump made the remark during an exclusive interview with ABC News over the course of two days, wherein Stephanopoulos joined the president on a visit to Iowa and back to Washington for a day inside the White House.
ABC News
ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos talks with President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, June 12, 2019.
Trump disputed the idea that if a foreign government provided information on a political opponent, it would be considered interference in our election process.
“It’s not an interference, they have information — I think I’d take it,” Trump said. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI — if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, ‘oh let’s call the FBI.’ The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressman, they all do it, they always have, and that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”
President Trump lamented the attention on his son, Donald Trump Jr., for his role in the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. Stephanopoulos asked whether Trump Jr. should have taken the Russians’ offer for “dirt” on then-candidate Hillary Clinton to the FBI.
“Somebody comes up and says, ‘hey, I have information on your opponent,’ do you call the FBI?” Trump responded.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ve seen a lot of things over my life. I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI. You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you do,” Trump continued. “Oh, give me a break – life doesn’t work that way.”
“The FBI director said that is what should happen,” Stephanopoulos replied, referring to comments FBI Director Christopher Wray made during congressional testimony last month, when he told lawmakers “the FBI would want to know about” any foreign election meddling.
But on Wednesday, the president refuted Wray’s sentiment.
“The FBI director is wrong, because frankly it doesn’t happen like that in life,” Trump said. “Now maybe it will start happening, maybe today you’d think differently.”
Tune in next week for an hour-long ABC News special, only on ABC — including “ABC News Live,” the 24/7 streaming news channel available on abcnews.com, Roku, Hulu, Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV.
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — Six suspects, including the alleged gunman, have been detained in the shooting of former Boston Red Sox star David Ortiz, the Dominican Republic’s chief prosecutor said Wednesday.
Other suspects were also being pursued in the shooting, which witnesses said was carried out by two men on a motorcycle and two other groups of people in cars.
“At this moment, they are being interrogated and we will continue deepening the investigation to get to the truth about what happened,” chief prosecutor Jean Alain Rodriguez said.
“Nobody involved in this lamentable episode will remain in impunity, not even the material or intellectual author” of the crime, he said.
Authorities have declined to give a motive for the shooting at a popular Santo Domingo bar Sunday night.
Among the suspects in custody is the alleged shooter, identified by authorities as Rolfy Ferreyra, aka Sandy.
Police Maj. Gen. Ney Aldrin Bautista Almonte said the alleged coordinator of the attack was offered 400,000 Dominican pesos, or about $7,800, to carry out the shooting. He said the alleged coordinator is also among those in custody.
Among the other suspects still at large were Luis Alfredo Rivas Clase, aka The Surgeon, as well as a woman known as The Venezuelan, or Red, and two other men, prosecutors said in a statement.
Meanwhile, in Boston, Ortiz’s wife said in statement that the former Red Sox slugger was able to sit up and take some steps as he recuperates in the intensive care unit at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“His condition is guarded, and he will remain in the ICU for the coming days, but he is making good progress toward recovery,” Tiffany Ortiz said in the statement.
Prosecutors have said the two men on the motorcycle were seen on security camera footage talking with other people in a gray Hyundai Accent and in another Hyundai on a nearby street before the shooting.
One of the suspects, Oliver Moises Mirabal Acosta, was seen driving the Accent before mounting a motorcycle driven by 25-year-old Eddy Vladimir Feliz Garcia, the prosecutors said in a court document.
“In one of the videos it was possible to observe both the accused and the shooter planning the commission of the incident right on Octavio Mejia Ricart Street, which is parallel to the place where the event took place,” the prosecutors said.
The document also revealed ineptitude, saying the motorcycle driver, Feliz Garcia, was captured after he skidded and fell off his bike as the pair tried to flee. Enraged onlookers captured Feliz Garcia and beat him bloody before handing him over to police.
Mirabal Acosta was captured Tuesday night in the town of Mao in the northern Dominican Republic.
Feliz Garcia’s lawyer said his client, who has been charged with being an accomplice to attempted murder, is an innocent motorcycle taxi driver who had no idea his passenger was going to commit a crime.
“He didn’t know what they were going to do. He’s a fan of David’s,” the attorney, Deivi Solano, said Tuesday.
The 43-year-old Ortiz frequently travels to Santo Domingo, where his father and a sister live. He was active in the social scene there, hitting nightspots with friends who included TV personalities and Dominican reggaeton musicians.
Beloved in his hometown, Ortiz traveled the dangerous streets of the Dominican capital with little or no security, trusting his fans to protect him, according to friends.
The Dominican Republic is one of the world’s most dangerous countries. The murder rate stands at 12.5 killings per 100,000 people, placing the Dominican Republic in the top 10% to 15% of the most violent countries in the world, according to U.S. State Department data.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Nadler is granted access to more documents in the Russia probe; Catherine Herridge reports on what’s next.
House Judiciary Committee Democrats announced Wednesday that former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks has agreed to testify before the panel next week, after she was subpoenaed in May concerning Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
The interview will be held June 19 and a closed-door transcript will be released, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said. Hicks, a longtime aide to Trump, was mentioned throughout Mueller’s report, which Democrats claimed included unexplored evidence of obstruction of justice.
Hicks told Fox News she had “nothing to add” to the committee’s statement. She is the Executive Vice President and Chief Communications Officer for Fox Corporation. Fox News is a subsidiary of Fox Corporation.
In a statement, Nadler, D-N.Y., seemingly recognized that Democrats might not get all the answers to their questions. Robert Trout, an attorney for Hicks, had told the panel in a letter last week that there were important differences between documents and testimony related to Hicks’ work on Trump’s campaign, as opposed to her time in the White House, which may be protected by executive privilege.
Former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks has agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee next week, its chairman said. (AP, File)
“Ms. Hicks understands that the Committee will be free to pose questions as it sees fit, including about her time on the Trump Campaign and her time in the White House,” Nadler said. “Should there be a privilege or other objection regarding any question, we will attempt to resolve any disagreement while reserving our right to take any and all measures in response to unfounded privilege assertions. We look forward to her testimony and plan to make the transcript promptly available to the public.”
Democrats’ subpoenas specifically requested, among a slew of other materials, information from Hicks concerning the “‘Republican Platform 2016’ provisions relating to Russia and Ukraine, including, but not limited to, the exclusion of language related to providing lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine and the inclusion of language about providing ‘appropriate assistance’ to the armed forces of Ukraine.”
Mueller’s report found no proof of any connection between the platform provision on Ukraine and any misconduct.
The development came amid a fury of aggressive legislative activity from House Democrats. The full House effectively voted on Tuesday to hold Attorney General Bill Barr and former White House Counsel Don McGahn in what Democrats characterized as “contempt,” after complaining that the two had improperly refused to turn over documents and testimony.
Democrats have been expected to go to court soon to enforce a subpoena against McGahn, who did not show up for his scheduled hearing last month. The White House asserted executive privilege and directed McGahn not to testify.
Nadler has additionally subpoenaed former McGahn aide Annie Donaldson, who also was mentioned throughout the Mueller report. Her deposition was scheduled for June 24, but it was unclear whether she will appear.
Earlier this week, Nadler’s panel hit pause on a separate, still-pending contempt vote that it earlier had forwarded on to the full House. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee held Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for unrelated matters concerning the 2020 census.
Fox News’ Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A day after the full House passed a civil contempt resolution authorizing its committees to take the Trump administration to court and pursue criminal contempt cases to enforce their subpoenas, the House Oversight Committee is testing the waters.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Oversight Committee passed a contempt resolution on a 24-15 vote for both Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, specifically because the Trump administration is not complying with the committee’s subpoena request for informationon why they added a US citizenship question to the 2020 census. Republican Rep. Justin Amash (MI), a vocal supporter of impeaching President Trump, voted with Democrats.
As Vox’s Dara Lind explained, thedecision toadd the citizenship question was a controversial move, and one that the US Supreme Court is set to issue a ruling on this term. A group of states sued the administrationover concern that the questioncould scare off immigrants from filling out the census questionnaire, and thus throw off the population data that’s used to draw House districts for the next 10 years.
There’s also evidence that Republicans may have been trying to give themselves an electoral advantage through this move; unearthed court files showing that late Republican redistricting strategist Thomas Hofeller “played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Decennial Census to create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, ‘Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.’”
While these states and the Trump administration await the Supreme Court ruling, Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and his committee members have been trying to learn more about why the citizenship question was added at all, seeking documents and witnesses from the administration to get answers.
Of course, they haven’t been successful — the Trump administration has refused to comply with the committee’s requests, as it has with all other congressional subpoenas. On Wednesday, the administration asserted sweeping executive privilege to block the committee’s access to documents related to the census.
That brings us to today’s committee vote, when Cummings will use the power the full House gave him Wednesday to hold Barr and Ross in contempt of Congress and pursue legal action of his own.
“It does not matter what the topic is — the tactics are the same,” Cummings said in recent remarks. “And this begs the question — what are they hiding?”
The census investigation speaks to a larger pattern of obstruction by the Trump administration
Much of the attention on Capitol Hill has been focused on Democrats’ battle to get parts of special counsel Robert Mueller’s unredacted report through subpoenas, which the White Househas strongly resisted.
But as Wednesday’s Oversight contempt vote shows, the Trump administration’s obstruction has happened on a much broader array of topics — including ones that have nothing to do with Mueller or the Russia investigation. Cummings has already had an early victory in what will undoubtedly be a long court battle to get the president’s financial information from the accounting firm Mazar’s (the Trump administration is currently appealing the ruling). But he is also investigating Trump administration actions that could impact everyday Americans.
Cummings’s proposed resolution is “to proceed with both criminal and civil actions to enforce the Committee’s bipartisan subpoenas,” meaning the committee could pursue a criminal contempt case against Ross and Barr. That’s a stronger stance than House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) has taken against Barr so far; on Monday, Nadler announced he was holding off on pursuing criminal contempt after his committee struck a deal with the Justice Department to get previously redacted parts of the Mueller report.
House Democrats were transparent about their intention to aggressively investigate Trump after they took power, arguing the prior Republican majority had given the president a free pass. According to Trump’s lawyers, Democrats have issued more than 100 subpoenas and other requests for information from the president and his associates.
The White House’s response has been to provide as much resistance to that congressional oversight as possible. Even on requests that are eventually acquiesced to, Democratic aides told me the administration will often slow-roll those queries or provide nonresponsive answers.
Trump has defied the conventional norms of transparency that we expect from our presidents since before his election. In this latest escalation, he’s been willing to entertain a constitutional crisis to continue withholding information from Democratic lawmakers.
Cummings’s contempt resolution is the latest test of whether Congress can hold the Trump administration accountable.
John Vandemoer’s case has unique circumstances meaning his sentence might not signal other “Varsity Blues” defendants will avoid prison. USA TODAY
BOSTON – Former Stanford University head sailing coach John Vandemoer was sentenced Wednesday to home supervision – not prison – for his actions in the nation’s college admissions scandal, a blow to prosecutors who had sought to send a strong message to other defendants in the high-profile case.
A federal judge gave Vandemoer two years of supervised release, including the first six months confined to his home, and a $10,000 fine in the first sentencing of the “Varsity Blues” college admissions bribery and cheating case.
He received a prison term of just one day, but it was deemed already served when he was arrested in March. Prosecutors had sought 13 months of prison while Vandemoer’s defense fought for probation over incarceration.
Vandemoer, 41, pleaded guilty in March to racketeering charges for accepting $610,000 in bribes from the admissions scheme’s mastermind Rick Singer to benefit Stanford’s sailing program in exchange for designating college applicants as sailing recruits to get them accepted into the prestigious university.
Federal Judge Rya Zobel said it’s important that Vandemoer be punished “because it’s too easy to do this kind of thing” but she didn’t think prison was warranted. Vandemoer funneled payments to Stanford’s sailing program, not his personal use, she noted, and none of the students tied to his payments attended Stanford as a direct result of his actions.
Vandemoer, joined by his wife, parents and sister outside the courthouse after the hearing, said he takes full responsibility for his actions and accepts the consequences.
“A big part of my coaching philosophy has always been that it’s not the mistake that defines you, but it’s what you do afterwards,” he said. “I’m holding true to those words now in the face of my biggest mistake.”
Vandemoer is the first of the 22 defendants who have pleaded guilty in the nation’s sweeping college admissions scandal to receive a sentence. But because of his case’s unique circumstances, his sentence might not signal other defendants will also avoid prison.
Still, the judge was bluntly skeptical of the government’s central case, saying that although Vandemoer certainly committed fraud against Stanford, she couldn’t determine that the payments he collected were bribes under the federal commercial bribery statute.
“You call them a bribe, but it’s not clear to me what makes it a bribe,” Zobel said.
The judge also questioned whether Stanford suffered any losses at all from Vandmoer’s actions – noting that no admissions slots were used on under-qualified students – and whether the coach himself gained anything from the transaction.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Rosen cited Vandemoer’s salary paid by Stanford as a loss for the school. He said directing the money to the sailing program was “absolutely his gain” because he could buy boats and other sailing equipment that benefit him.
The judge shot back: “So it’s a psychological gain.”
Rosen responded: “It’s not a psychological gain. He had the choice to put (the money) where he wanted.”
Stanford has said the university is in discussions with the California attorney general about an appropriate way for the “tainted” money brought in by Vandemoer to be used for “the public good.”
Prosecutors, led by Rosen, argued that Vandemoer’s sentence should set an example in the historic admissions case, calling prison “the only way to deter similarly situated individuals” who are “entrusted with the power to shape figures.”
He told the judge a prison sentence for Vandemoer “will set the tone for this case going forward” – and “send a powerful message” that if a person takes bribes for college admissions, he or she will be criminally prosecuted and go to jail.
He added that the sentence should signal to “honest and hardworking high school students” who are trying to get into college the right way that the wealthy can’t pay bribes to undermine the system.
“These kids deserve that. Our society needs that,” he said prior to the sentencing. If Vandemoer were to avoid prison, Rosen said, it would be “shortchanging not only the criminal justice system but all those kids in school trying to get in by hard work.”
“The danger in this case and others is not an over-sentence but failing to send a message,” he said.
But Vandemoer’s defense, led by attorney Robert Fisher, argued that he did not personally profit from the scheme “though he easily could have.”
“He is a unique individual in what is a unique and unprecedented case,” Fisher said. “No student got in. Money was given to the victim. We have unusual facts.”
“Everyone but Mr. Vandemoer gained something,” Fisher said of the 50 overall defendants in the college admissions case that also include famous actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin. “He got nothing. He gave every single dime to sailing, to Stanford. He could have pocketed that. He didn’t.”
Fisher highlighted letters from some of Vandemoer’s former sailing players and others – 27 in all – lauding his character. Vandemoer is married with two children under 2 years old.
“Jail isn’t going to do anything other than punish his family.” he said, adding that his client has already lost his job, his housing and health insurance and been the subject of countless media reports. “This is a gentleman whose heart is in the right place .”
In March, Vandemoer admitted to designating a female college applicant from China as a sailing recruit in early 2016 after Singer promised that the student’s family would “endow” sailing coach salaries. Singer, who funneled payments from wealthy parents to carry out the admissions scheme, created a fake sailing profile for the student, but it was too late in the recruitment process, and the student was accepted through the normal admissions process.
Prosecutors say Singer paid Vandemoer’s sailing program $500,000 for his efforts anyway and for “recruiting” future clients.
The initial student has since been revealed as Yusi Zhao from China, whose mother paid $6.5 million to Singer’s nonprofit The Key Worldwide Foundation in what prosecutors say was the largest single transaction in the entire scheme. Zhao is no longer at Stanford.
In the spring of 2018, Singer funneled an additional $110,000 into the sailing program for a second student to be designated as a sailing recruit, but the student chose to attend Brown University instead, prosecutors say.
Later that year, Singer promised Vandemoer an additional $160,000 for the sailing program to get a third female student tagged as a sailing recruit, but she ultimately went to Vanderbilt University. By this point. Singer was cooperating with federal investigators and his phone calls with Vandemoer were wiretapped.
The next defendant set to be sentenced in the college admissions scandal is Mark Riddell, a former college counselor at a private high school in Florida, who has pleaded guilty to taking tests for the children of parents who paid bribes to Singer. His sentencing date is set for July 18.
“Of all the questions that Mueller helped resolve, he left many critical questions unanswered,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the committee’s chairman.
Mr. Schiff said that the committee, which oversees American intelligence agencies, had not been briefed on the status of a counterintelligence inquiry into whether Russia has compromised Mr. Trump or his associates, despite repeated requests. Mr. Schiff said later he was “running out of patience” and could soon issue a subpoena to force law enforcement officials to brief lawmakers.
Committee Republicans, dismissing Mr. Mueller’s report as a “shoddy political hit piece,” said the Russian threat had little to do with Mr. Trump and charged anew that biased officials within the F.B.I., State Department and other government agencies had conspired with Democrats to tarnish Mr. Trump’s candidacy and presidency.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump asserted executive privilege Wednesday to keep secret documents related to adding a citizenship question to the census as a House panel debated holding two Cabinet members in contempt for defying subpoenas for the documents.
In a further escalation of conflicts between Congress and the administration, the Oversight and Reform Committee scheduled votes against Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for defying subpoenas for documents about how a citizenship question was added to the 2020 census. The Judiciary Committee found Barr in contempt for defying a subpoena for the full report from former special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The Constitution calls for the census to count everyone in the country every decade. The administration’s decision to ask people whether they are citizens in 2020 has been contentious because of Democratic concerns it could discourage participation. Republicans said the census included a citizenship question from 1820 to 1950, along with appearing on more detailed questionnaires in more recent decades.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd told Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., in a letter Wednesday that Trump asserted executive privilege to prevent the release of documents listed in the subpoena, including a Dec. 12, 2017, letter to the U.S. Census Bureau. Trump protectively asserted executive privilege over the rest of the subpoenaed documents while officials determine whether they should be kept secret.
“By proceeding with today’s vote, you have abandoned the accommodation process with respect to your requests and subpoenas for documents concerning the secretary’s decision to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census,” Boyd said.
Trump declined to discuss the assertion of executive privilege Wednesday during a joint appearance at the White House with the president of Poland, but he defended the citizenship question.
“That’s really a legal matter. But I think when you have a census, and you’re not allowed to talk about whether or not somebody is a citizen or not, that doesn’t sound so good to me,” Trump said. “So I don’t want to get you into this battle, but it’s ridiculous.”
Cummings opened the committee debate at 10 a.m. but said he would postpone the contempt vote until around 4 p.m., so lawmakers could study the letters exchanged over executive privilege. He said the bipartisan subpoenas were issued more than two months ago.
“It appears to be another example of the administration’s blanket defiance,” Cummings said. “This begs the question: What is being hidden?”
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the committee, said Democrats were moving urgently on the contempt vote in an attempt to influence the Supreme Court, which is considering a case dealing with the census question.
“This is just another attempt to muddy the waters,” Jordan said. “It’s not what we should be doing.”
The census counts the population once a decade to apportion seats in Congress, providing figures to map House districts and contributing to enforcement of the Voting Rights Act by showing the Justice Department where minorities live. The population figures are used throughout government to divide billions in federal spending each year.
The Supreme Court, which has called the census “the linchpin of the federal statistical system,” heard a case about the citizenship question in April, and a ruling is likely by the end of June. The court will basically decide whether Ross had ample reason to ask about citizenship, followed acceptable procedures and acted within the bounds of the Constitution.
Cummings said Tuesday the administration refused to provide any documents for a variety of inquiries dealing with hurricane recovery in Puerto Rico, White House security clearances and technology transfers to Saudi Arabia. He said enforcing the subpoenas Wednesday is critical to answering why Ross added the citizenship question, which Democrats fear will be used to intimidate minorities from responding to the once-a-decade count of the population.
“This is a broad, coordinated campaign to stonewall investigations across the board – and it is being directed from the very top,” Cummings said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Tuesday the citizenship question threatened “to put a chilling effect on us getting an accurate count.”
“The well-being of the American people and integrity of our democracy are imperiled by this brazen behavior,” Pelosi said in arguing for lawsuits to enforce subpoenas.
Trump said he will defy subpoenas because the multiple House inquiries amount to presidential harassment. House Republicans argued that Democrats are moving too hastily to find officials in contempt and to file federal lawsuits, rather than spending more time negotiating with the Justice Department for contested documents.
“The record before the committee does not support contempt of Congress at this time,” Jordan said Tuesday in a letter to Cummings. “If you were serious about getting to the facts on the Administration’s decision to reinstitute a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, you should attempt to obtain the information from other sources before rushing to contempt of Congress.”
The census fight followed a House vote Tuesday to authorize lawsuits to enforce subpoenas against Barr for the full Mueller report and underlying documents, and against former White House counsel Don McGahn. The House agreed to ease the approval of lawsuits to enforce subpoenas. Traditionally, the full House voted to authorize lawsuits, but the resolution adopted in a party-line vote allowed a five-member leadership group controlled by Democrats to approve lawsuits.
The House is locked in a pair of court fights with Trump over subpoenas for his financial records. Two federal judges rejected Trump’s efforts to block the subpoenas, and the president appealed, arguing that “Congress is simply not allowed to conduct law enforcement investigations of the president.”
Contributing: David Jackson
More about the legal and political fight over the census:
In the Oversight Committee’s case, members have protested Mr. Barr’s instructions to a subordinate involved in the census to defy a subpoena requiring him to appear for a deposition. They also say Mr. Ross has blockaded the committee’s requests for information from his department, which houses the Census Bureau.
The Census Bureau has estimated that asking all U.S. residents whether they are citizens may spark a 5.8-percent decline in response rates from noncitizens, which Democrats fear will skew the reapportionment of House seats toward Republicans while depriving states of federal resources. The legality of the Trump administration’s decision to add the citizenship question is the subject of a lawsuit that should be decided by the Supreme Court this month.
Republicans protested the committee action and tried unsuccessfully to block it from going forward, arguing that Democrats had rushed the action in an attempt to influence the Supreme Court before it rules. The Trump administration has called the Oversight investigation an attempt to meddle in the legal fight. Democrats first tried to begin the inquiry last year, when they were in the minority, but majority Republicans refused to pursue it. In January, when Democrats assumed the majority in the House, Mr. Cummings said he would make the investigation a priority.
Taken together, this week’s action by committees and the full House are part of a strategy by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to hold off calls to quickly impeach Mr. Trump by demonstrating that there are other ways to hold him and his administration publicly accountable for misconduct.
The House’s vote Tuesday should expedite the process by which other committees embroiled in disputes with the Trump administration can seek to have the courts enforce their oversight powers.
Democratic presidential candidate and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., spoke to the NPR Politics Podcast about abortion access, the economy and trade, on Sunday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
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Democratic presidential candidate and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., spoke to the NPR Politics Podcast about abortion access, the economy and trade, on Sunday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
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California Sen. Kamala Harris says that if she’s elected president, her administration’s Department of Justice would likely pursue criminal obstruction of justice charges against a former President Donald Trump.
“I believe that they would have no choice and that they should, yes,” Harris told the NPR Politics Podcast, pointing to the 10 instances of possible obstruction that former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report detailed without making a determination as to whether the episodes amounted to criminal conduct.
“There has to be accountability,” Harris added. “I mean look, people might, you know, question why I became a prosecutor. Well, I’ll tell you one of the reasons — I believe there should be accountability. Everyone should be held accountable, and the president is not above the law.”
The former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general said she wasn’t dissuaded by the prospect of a former American president facing trial and a potential prison sentence. “The facts and the evidence will take the process where it leads,” she said.
“I do believe that we should believe Bob Mueller when he tells us essentially that the only reason an indictment was not returned is because of a memo in the Department of Justice that suggests you cannot indict a sitting president. But I’ve seen prosecution of cases on much less evidence.”
Referencing the Supreme Court Building’s façade, Harris said, “On one side etched in the marble are the words ‘equal justice under law.’ It doesn’t say ‘except for the president.’ There you go.”
Potential criminal charges against Trump were just one of several topics addressed during the half-hour interview.
At a time when many of the other Democrats in the presidential race are starting to make more explicit arguments against former Vice President Joe Biden’s positions, Harris declined to criticize Biden for his abrupt shift against his prior support for the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits most federal funding for abortions.
“Listen, I’ll speak for myself,” Harris said. “The bottom line on the Hyde Amendment is that it is directly, in effect, targeting poor women and women who don’t have money.”
The NPR Politics Podcast episode is the fourth in an ongoing series of interviews with presidential candidates. The Harris interview took place in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the midst of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Hall of Fame Celebration, an event that drew 19 White House hopefuls on Sunday.
Harris had just finished her five-minute speech to the room of Democratic officials, volunteers and activists. It ended with a call for Democrats to “prosecute the case,” politically, against the Trump presidency. Harris cited Trump’s attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his repeated dismissal of the U.S. intelligence community’s concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 election, among other things.
Trump insists that the strong economy will top all those issues in next year’s election. In the interview, Harris dismissed that view.
“There are pretty much two indicators for this president of the supposed greatness of his economy. The stock market,” said Harris. “Well, that’s fine if you own stocks. Or the jobless numbers, the unemployment numbers. Well, yeah, people are working in our country. You know what? They’re working two and three jobs, and in our America, people should not have to work more than one job to be able to put food on the table and have a roof over their head. And so when we talk about the lives of real people in our country, they’re not doing better under this president and his policies.”
Protesters surrounded the legislative council building and swamped the city centre on Wednesday. Masks and cling film have been handed out by organisers to protect protesters from pepper spray as they faced off with riot police who held up signs warning they were prepared to use force on the crowds to maintain stability.
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And being favored by millionaires could be a negative for Democratic candidates, who are running on populist, antiwealth platforms. Biden is already being attacked by his opponents for being too cozy with wealthy donors and corporate lobbyists.
Yet given how much wealthy investors have prospered under the Trump presidency — from lower taxes and surging stock prices and cash buybacks — millionaire support for Biden suggests that economic issues may not be their primary concern.
“I think what it tells us is that millionaires think that Biden is better against Trump than the other candidates,” said George Walper, president of Spectrem Group, which conducts the survey. To be included in the poll, respondents had to have investable assets of $1 million or more. Of the 750 respondents, 261 were Republicans, 218 were Democrats and 261 identified as Independent.
Walper said that just as in 2016, millionaire voters may be underreporting their support for Trump.
“People’s underlying opinions may not be expressed here,” he said. “When it comes down to who they actually vote for, that gap may narrow.”
Wealthy voters are also large donors, which could help Biden. Nearly half of Democratic millionaires plan to donate to the 2020 campaign or have already donated, according to the survey, that compares with less than a third of Republicans.
João Micaelo, then the 14-year-old son of Portuguese immigrants, clearly remembered the Asian boy in a tracksuit and Nike shoes walking into 6A, a class of 22 students at his small public school in Bern,Switzerland, in 1998. The kids were already seated at their desks when the new boy was brought in and introduced as Pak Un, the son of North Korean diplomats. There was a spare seat next to João, so the new boy, who simply went by the name of Un, sat in it. The 12-year-old had a pudding-bowl haircut and the start of what would one day become a very pronounced double chin.
The pair soon became close, bonding because of their seat placement but also because neither was particularly academic. In sixth grade, classes were split into two streams, and both Un and João were sent to the group of academically weaker students. Un was embarrassed when he was called to answer questions in front of the class—not because he didn’t know the answers necessarily but because he couldn’t express himself. So João helped him with his German homework, while the newcomer helped his new friend with math. João remembers Un as quiet but said that he was very decisive and capable of making his point.
Story Continued Below
It wasn’t until years later that João and his other schoolmates from Bern realized who the new kid was: Kim Jong Un, the future leader of North Korea.
When he was announced as his father’s heir in 2010, some analysts hoped that, having spent four years in Switzerland during his formative teenage years, Kim Jong Un would be a more open-minded leader of North Korea. That he might embark on reforms that, while not turning his family’s Stalinist state into a liberal democracy, might make it a little less repressive. After all, in many ways,Kim’s time in Switzerland reveals an adolescence and education that were not so different from typical Western ones: There was a love of basketball, a curriculum that required him to learn about Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, and a wardrobe packed with brand-name tracksuits (jeans were still out of the question).
But these formative years, of which this is the most complete account to date, might have had the opposite effect on the future leader. Kim’s years in Switzerland, during which he was enrolled in both a tony private school and a small German-speaking public school, would have taught him that if he were to live in the outside world, he would have been entirely unremarkable. A nobody. Far from persuading him to change his country, these years would have shown him the necessity of perpetuating the system that had turned him, his father and grandfather into deities. The years also reveal some of the same interests and temperamental characteristics that would come to define the man who is the biggest foreign-policy thorn in the United States’ side. For instance, the same Kim Jong Un who had his uncle and half-brother killed was also known as a teenager for lashing out at his classmates when they spoke in German, a language that he had struggled to master himself.
Kim Jong Un was still very much a child when he departed for Bern, the capital of Switzerland, in the summer of 1996 to join his older brother Kim Jong Chol at school. He found himself in a chocolate-box picturesque city that that felt more like a quaint town than an international capital. Bern was famous for its clock tower, known as the Zytglogge, which had led a young patent clerk called Albert Einstein to develop the theory of relativity some 90 years earlier. Einstein, riding home from work on a tram one evening in 1905, solved the mystery of “space-time” that had been bothering him for years.
The August that Kim Jong Un arrived in Switzerland, Mission Impossible was in theaters, and Trainspotting was about to open. Top-of-the-line personal computers used floppy disks and ran on MS-DOS.
The North Korean princeling emerged from his cloistered childhood into this new, open world. It wasn’t his first time abroad—he had traveled to Europe and Japan before—but it was the first time he had lived outside the confines of the North Korean royal court.
He joined his older brother, who had been living in Liebefeld, a decidedly suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of Bern, for two years with their maternal aunt, Ko Yong Suk, her husband, Ri Gang, and their three children. “We lived in a normal home and acted like a normal family. I acted like their mother,” Kim’s aunt told me when I tracked her down in the United States almost 20 years later. “Their friends would come over, and I would make them snacks. It was a very normal childhood with birthday parties and gifts and Swiss kids coming over to play.”
They spoke Korean at home and ate Korean food, and the boys’ friends didn’t know that Imo—as Jong Chol and Jong Un called her—was Korean for “Aunt,” not for “Mom.”
They enjoyed living in Europe and having money. Their family photo albums contain pictures of the future leader of North Korea swimming in the Mediterranean on the French Riviera, dining al fresco in Italy, going to Euro Disney in Paris—it wasn’t Kim Jong Un’s first trip there; his mother had already taken him a few years before—and skiing in the Swiss Alps. They relaxed at a luxury hotel in Interlaken, the swanky resort town outside Bern that is the gateway to the Jungfrau mountains and home to a famous amusement park.
All the members of the Kim family had carefully constructed identities to conceal who they really were. Ri was registered as a driver at the North Korean Embassy and went by the name Pak Nam Chol. Pak is one of the most common Korean surnames after Kim. Ko, in keeping with Korean practice whereby women keep their surnames after marriage, had paperwork naming her as Chong Yong Hye.
Kim Jong Chol was officially Pak Chol, and Kim Jong Un was Pak Un. But the aliases were not new. All of them had been accredited to the North Korean mission to the United Nations in Geneva since 1991, and these diplomatic documents would have allowed them to travel freely in Europe.
Under this identity, Kim Jong Un settled in Liebefeld, where the architecture is more ’70s concrete block than Alpine village. It is not dissimilar to the brutalist style of Pyongyang. Behind the main street in an “industrial alley,” as the sign puts it, next door to a large wine trading company that looks like a monastery, is No. 10 Kirchstrasse. This was Kim Jong Un’s home while he was in Switzerland. It’s in a three-story, light-orange sandstone building surrounded by hydrangeas.
The North Korean regime had bought six apartments in the building shortly after their construction in 1989 for a price of 4 million Swiss francs—a little over $4 million at the time—for the family and some of the other North Korean dignitaries living in the Swiss capital.
The apartment was more modest than he was used to back home, with no pictures on the walls, but the teenage Kim Jong Un had gadgets his classmates could only dream of: a mini-disc player, which was the cutting-edge way to store music in the years before iPods; a Sony PlayStation; and lots of movies that hadn’t yet been released in theaters. The few friends who went to his apartment loved watching his action films, especially those featuring Jackie Chan or the latest James Bond.
In Switzerland, Kim Jong Un could live a relatively normal existence. He joined his older brother at the International School of Berne, a private, English-language school attended by the children of diplomats and other expats in the capital. Tuition cost more than $20,000 a year.
No one batted an eyelid when Kim Jong Un, sometimes wearing the school T-shirt, complete with Swiss flag and a bear, the symbol of the capital, was delivered to school in a chauffeur-driven car. Many other diplomats’ kids arrived at school the same way.
The school, whose student population today spans about 40 nationalities, touts itself as being “perfectly situated in a neutral country.” Indeed, Switzerland, famous for its discretion about everything from bank accounts to the schooling of dictators’ children, was the ideal location for the secretive North Koreans.
When the news first emerged that Kim Jong Un would be the successor to Kim Jong Il, many former acquaintances, who had known both brothers under different names and were now unsure which one had been named the successor, reported tidbits of information that were in fact about his brother. Classmates recounted how the North Korean was introverted but was relatively fluent in English, but it turned out they were remembering the wrong North Korean, “Pak Chol” instead of “Pak Un.”
One snippet—a penchant for the films of Jean-Claude van Damme—did, however, appear to apply to the two boys, both of whom apparently loved to watch movies featuring the Belgian action star. In a coincidence that would play out later, van Damme co-starred in a Hollywood movie called “Double Team” with a certain basketballer named Dennis Rodman. The film came out in 1997, while Kim Jong Un was in Switzerland.
Kim Jong Un was obsessed with basketball. He had a hoop outside the apartment and would play out there often, sometimes making more noise than the neighbors would have preferred.
Every day at 5 p.m., when the school bell rang, Kim Jong Un would head to the basketball courts at his school or at the high school in the nearby city of Lerbermatt, less than a 10-minute walk away. He always wore the same outfit for basketball: an authentic Chicago Bulls top with Michael Jordan’s number—23—and Bulls shorts and his Air Jordan shoes. His ball was also top of the line: a Spalding with the official mark of the NBA.
Kim’s competitive side came out on the basketball court. He could be aggressive and often indulged in trash talk. He was serious on the court, hardly ever laughing or even talking, just focused on the game. When things went badly for him, he would curse or even pound his head against the wall.
From his base in Europe, he was even able to see some of the greats. He had been to Paris to see an NBA exhibition game and had photos of himself standing with Toni Kukoc of the Chicago Bulls and Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers.
It was his mother, Ko Yong Hui, who first sparked his interest in the sport. There’s an old tale that Korean mothers, North and South, like to tell their children: If you play basketball, you’ll grow taller.
Kim Jong Un was short as a child, and his father was not a tall man—he was only 5 foot 3, and famously wore platform shoes to try to compensate—so Ko encouraged her son to play basketball in the hope the tale was true. He grew to be 5 foot 7, so maybe it worked a bit.
She was thrilled to see her son taking to basketball, a sport that she believed would help him clear his mind and loosen his childhood obsession with planes and engines. Instead, Kim Jong Un’s mother and aunt soon saw that basketball had become an addiction, too—the boy was sleeping with his basketball in his bed—and one that came at the expense of his studies. His mother would visit Bern regularly to scold her son for playing too much and studying too little.
She arrived on a passport that declared her to be Chong Il Son, assigned to the North Korean mission at the United Nations in Geneva since 1987, but the Swiss knew exactly who she was. After all, she arrived in the country in a Russian-made Ilyushin 62 jet bearing the insignia of Air Koryo, the North Korean state airline. The plane, which bore the tail number P882, was for VIPs only. It even had a full bedroom onboard.
All sorts of bags and merchandise would be loaded on and off the plane, watched carefully by Swiss intelligence. They monitored Ko Yong Hui closely, keeping records of everything from her shopping expeditions on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse, one of the world’s most exclusive shopping avenues, to her hospital bills at fancy private clinics on Lake Geneva.
They also knew who her children were. In private conversation, they called Kim Jong Chol “the tall, skinny one” and Kim Jong Un “the short, fat one.” But the new Swiss attorney general, Carla Del Ponte (who would later become chief prosecutor in the international criminal tribunals of Yugoslavia and Rwanda), had forbidden the Swiss authorities to monitor the children. In famously discreet Switzerland, they were allowed to just be children— even if they were the children of one of the world’s most notorious tyrants.
But two years into his stay in Switzerland, Kim Jong Un’s world was turned upside. His mother had been diagnosed with advanced breast cancer and was starting intensive medical treatment in France. Her prognosis wasn’t good.
The illness could also prove terminal for Kim Jong Un’s guardians, his maternal aunt and uncle.Their link to the regime, the relationship that had vaulted them into this privileged position, was becoming weaker by the day.
They decided to abandon their charges and make a dash for freedom.
So after nightfall on Sunday, May 17, Kim Jong Un’s aunt and uncle packed their three children into a taxi and went to the U.S. Embassy. Only their oldest, who was then 14, the same age as Kim Jong Un, knew what was going to happen next.
When they arrived at the embassy, they explained that they were North Koreans, that Ko was the leader’s sister-in-law, and that they were seeking asylum in the United States. The U.S. government didn’t know at that stage who Kim Jong Un was, so Ko and Ri didn’t initially mention that part. They were granted asylum in the United States and settled down in Middle America, started a dry-cleaning store like so many other Korean immigrants and watched their children flourish in their new environment.
Kim Jong Un’s mother lived for six more years, dying in a Paris hospital in 2004.
***
When he returned to Bern after spending the summer of 1998 in North Korea, Kim Jong Un did not go back to the private international school. Instead, he made a new start at the German-speaking public school in his neighborhood, Schule Liebefeld Steinhölzli. That way, he wouldn’t have to explain why his “parents” had changed.
The school was less than 400 yards from the apartment block where the North Koreans lived, a five-minute walk down the concrete staircase, past the supermarket and other shops, and around the traffic circle.
In the late 1990s, When Kim Jong Un attended the school, a cluster of two- and three-story functionally designed buildings, it had only 200 students and nine classes. The education department liked to have many small schools so that no student would have to travel too far each day.
When he first enrolled at the school in Liebefeld, Kim Jong Un started in a “reception” class for children who did not speak German, spending several months learning his lessons in German but at a slower pace with simpler instruction.
To find out more about what the young North Korean learned in school, I took the bus to Köniz one day and visited the municipality office. Marisa Vifian, head of the Köniz education department, pulled out a big white binder containing the school curriculum from the 1990s. There was the usual lineup of classes—German, math, science, health, foreign languages, music, art and sports—as well as units like “The World Around Us,” which taught world religions and cultures.
Once he finished in the preparatory reception class, Kim Jong Un joined the regular sixth-grade class.
While his friend João remembered Kim Jong Un as “ambitious but not aggressive,” according to an unpublished interview with a Swiss journalist, other students remember the new kid being forceful because he had trouble communicating. While lessons were in High German, the more formal variety of the language spoken in official situations in Switzerland, families and friends spoke to each other in Swiss German, former classmates recalled. This is technically a dialect, but to an outsider, it sounds so different that it might as well be Dutch. It was frustrating to Kim Jong Un, who resented his inability to understand. “He kicked us in the shins and even spat at us,” said one former classmate.
In addition to the communication problems, the other students tended to think of Kim Jong Un as a weird outsider, his school friends recall, not least because the North Korean always wore tracksuits, never jeans, the standard uniform of teenagers the world over. In North Korea, jeans are a symbol of the despised capitalists.
One classmate remembered him wearing Adidas tracksuits with three stripes down the side and the newest pair of Nike Air Jordans. The other kids in the school could only dream of having such shoes, said Nikola Kovacevic, another former classmate who often played basketball with Kim after school and estimates a pair cost more than $200 in Switzerland at the time.
A class photo from that time shows the teenagers decked out in an array of 1990s fashion, with chambray shirts and oversized sweatshirts, assembled under a tree in the schoolyard. Kim Jong Un stands in the center of the back row wearing a tracksuit, gray and black with red piping and big red letters reading “NIKE” down the sleeve. He’s staring unsmiling at the camera.
Another photo taken around this time shows Kim with a smile, wearing a silver necklace over his black T-shirt and looking like a typical teenager. Another reveals some fuzz on his top lip and a smattering of pimples on his cheek.
As he moved into the upper years at school, Kim Jong Un improved his German enough that he was able to get by in class. Even the girl whom he had kicked and spat at conceded that he “thawed” over time as he became more sociable.
Still, he remained introverted. At a time when teenagers are usually pushing boundaries, Kim Jong Un was no party animal or playboy in training. He didn’t go to school camp, parties, or discos, and he didn’t touch a drop of alcohol.
Kim Jong Un “absolutely avoided contact with girls,” the former classmate said, adding that she never had a substantial conversation with him. “He was a loner and didn’t share anything about his private life.”
His test scores were never great, but Kim Jong Un went on to pass the seventh and eighth grades and was there for a part of the ninth grade at the high school, the Köniz education authorities confirmed.
The education that Kim received in Switzerland presented a worldview very different from the one he experienced in North Korea. Kim Jong Un’s lessons included human rights, women’s rights, and the development of democracy. One unit was even called “Happiness, Suffering, Life and Death.” Students learned about Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi. There was a strong emphasis on cultural diversity; religious, ethnic, and social groups; the rights of human beings; and standing in solidarity with the disadvantaged.
It’s hard to know what Kim Jong Un thought during these lessons. No such rights existed in North Korea. But this might not have been as jarring to Kim as it sounds because he had encountered very few North Koreans and almost none in situations outside those that were carefully choreographed to show smiling citizens who beamed contentment at him. Kim could have told himself that his people didn’t need all those fine ideals because they were evidently very happy under his father’s leadership.
Anyway, Kim Jong Un didn’t stay at school for much longer.
One day, around Easter 2001, with only a couple of months to go until he completed ninth grade, Kim told Micaelo that his father had ordered him back to North Korea and that he would leave soon. He offered no explanation for his sudden recall.
Kim’s other friends received no such notice. The boy just stopped coming to school one day. Their teachers said they had no idea what happened to him, either.
Just like that, Pak Un was gone. His classmates wouldn’t see him again for almost a decade, when he would appear on the balcony of a majestic building in the middle of Pyongyang with his father, having been crowned The Great Successor.
The president’s son has agreed to answer questions on six topics, including the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, in a closed-door hearing with the Senate Intelligence Committee; Catherine Herridge reports from Capitol Hill.
Donald Trump Jr. said Wednesday he has “nothing to correct” as he returned to testify behind closed doors before the Senate Intelligence Committee, following a subpoena from the committee’s Republican chairman, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr.
The president’s son is expected to field questions related to the committee’s Russia investigation.
Among other things, queries could address Trump Jr.’s knowledge of negotiations for a Trump Tower in Moscow before the 2016 election. During an earlier 2017 interview on Capitol Hill, Trump said he had only been “peripherally aware” of the possible deal. But President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who is currently serving a prison sentence for offenses including lying to Congress, said he spoke to Trump Jr. about the deal multiple times.
When asked Wednesday morning if he was going to correct any of his past testimony, Trump Jr. said there was “nothing to correct.”
Also a potential subject of questioning is the 2016 Trump Tower meeting that Trump Jr. set up between a Russian attorney and senior Trump campaign members. The campaign hoped that the meeting would result in them getting incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, but it was ultimately unsuccessful.
Wednesday’s closed-door hearing comes after Trump Jr. already testified for more than 20 hours and provided thousands of documents to Congress. Last month, President Trump supported his son, questioning the need for the additional testimony.
“I don’t know why. I have no idea why. But it seems very unfair to me,” the president said.
Some Republicans even said Trump Jr. should not comply with the subpoena, which is believed to be the first subpoena targeting a member of the president’s family.
Burr’s home state colleague, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., tweeted, “It’s time to move on & start focusing on issues that matter to Americans.” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a GOP member of the panel, said he understood Trump Jr.’s frustration. Cornyn’s Texas colleague, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, said there was “no need” for the subpoena.
Fox News’ Jason Donner contributed to this report.
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