Trump shocks grieving Britons
President brings couple to White House with suspect in son’s death
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday he had tried unsuccessfully to arrange a White House meeting between the parents of a teenager killed in an August crash in Britain and the American driver involved in the crash.
Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn met with Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday evening but balked when he said Anne Sacoolas, the woman sought by British police for her involvement in the crash that killed their son, was in a nearby room and wanted to meet with them.
“I offered to bring the person in question in,” the president told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “They weren’t ready for it. But I did offer.”
The attempted intervention added another painful twist to a case that has enraged Britons in the weeks since Sacoolas, 42, claimed diplomatic immunity and left the country in the days after the crash that killed Harry Dunn, 19. Since then, British and U.S. officials have said that Sacoolas’ claim to immunity is no longer relevant since she has returned home.
Shortly after her 15-minute meeting with the president, Charles said Trump proposed that she and her husband meet with Sacoolas, but Dunn said that the meeting felt “rushed” and that it would not have gone well.
“The bombshell was dropped not soon after we walked in the room,” Charles told reporters. “We would still love to meet with her, but it has to be on our terms and on U.K. soil.”
Charles added that Sacoolas, the wife of a U.S. diplomat, “needs to come back and face the justice system.”
In talking to reporters Wednesday, Trump said he had arranged the meeting at the request of Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain.
“He asked me if I’d do that, and I did it,” Trump said.
But an official in Johnson’s office, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation, denied the prime minister had suggested Trump arrange the meeting in the way it was eventually formatted. The president brought up Sacoolas when the two leaders spoke last week, but no plans were completed.
“The prime minister asked the president to do all he could to help resolve this tragic issue,” a spokeswoman for Johnson said in a statement. “The president agreed to work on trying to find a way forward.”
The end result was not what either side had envisioned.
Sacoolas was said to be “devastated by this tragic incident,” according to a statement made on her behalf by her lawyer, Amy Jeffress. “No loss compares to the death of a child and Anne extends her deepest sympathy to Harry Dunn’s family,” the statement said.
A person familiar with what transpired said Sacoolas had wanted to meet privately with the family, but was directed to come to the White House to participate in Trump’s plan.
Mark Stephens, a lawyer for the Dunn family, called the president’s surprise offer of a meeting “a gargantuan miscalculation,” and suggested that the meeting had been orchestrated for the benefit of the news media.
Stephens told reporters that the meeting was attended by “the head of U.S. spying,” and later clarified in a phone interview Wednesday that he was referring to Robert O’Brien, the president’s national security adviser.
“This O’Brien had effectively curated the idea that there would be a confrontation between the Dunns and Mrs. Sacoolas and that the press would film it,” Stephens said.
White House officials denied the claim that the meeting had been arranged with the idea that the news media would capture it, and reiterated that the British prime minister had helped hatch the plan.
Apart from expressing anguish at the family’s loss through her lawyer, Sacoolas has not spoken out publicly about the crash, which occurred Aug. 27 about 60 miles northwest of London.