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Editor’s note: Voice of America is following two new U.S. lawmakers — Democratic Representative Katie Porter, representing California’s 45th congressional district, and Republican Representative Pete Stauber, representing Minnesota’s 8th congressional district — as they learn the ropes as freshman lawmakers in the 116th U.S. Congress. Through their eyes, we hope to offer VOA audiences a deeper insight into the inner workings of one of the three branches in the American system of government. In the coming months, VOA will be reporting on the lawmakers’ experiences and challenges during their first year in the House of Representatives.

Katie Porter’s birthday took a back seat to something more important this year. On the day she turned 45, she was sworn in as California’s 45th district’s U.S. Representative.

Newly elected Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi congratulated her from the speaker’s seat shortly after Pelosi swore in this year’s 116th Congress. But Democrat Porter’s first day was filled with official business, including meetings, getting identification badges and parking permits, and greeting her supporters.

A family celebration was saved for the evening. “My kids were very excited that there [were] cupcakes and cake and cookies and sugary drinks — all at the same event,” Porter said.

She is one of a record number of 102 female lawmakers in this year’s U.S. House of Representatives. They make up nearly 24 percent of the 435 representatives, whereas women outnumber men in the general U.S. population, 51 percent to 49 percent.

Also taking the oath of office Thursday were the first Muslim, Native American, Somali and Palestinian women, as well as the youngest and oldest representatives elected to the House, making the 116th Congress the most diverse in history.

From professor to politician

Prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Porter was better known as Professor Porter, a tenured and published law professor at the University of California, Irvine campus.

Her focus on consumer bankruptcy stemmed from what she experienced as a child in Iowa during the 1980s farm crisis, when thousands of family farmers defaulted on loans and lost their land. She said she witnessed what happened when the local bank was shut down and the government did not step in.

Porter studied law at Harvard University under Elizabeth Warren, now a senator from Massachusetts who this week announced a plan to run for president in 2020.

Porter, a single mother, was joined in her sparse office this week by her three children–ages 12, 10, and 7– who munched on pizza and played games as she prepared.

“This Lego piggy bank was a present from a friend that knows I want to work on financial services,” she said pointing to a toy.

Representative Maxine Waters, a fellow Democrat from California, is the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, which means Porter may have a shot at being assigned to the committee.

Beginnings of campaign

On election night, Nov. 8, 2016, Porter was ready to head to Washington, having been asked to join Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s transition team. She would be involved in housing policy.

But Clinton lost the election, and Porter felt she had lost a job.

The day after the election, however, a friend said, “You don’t have to wait for other people to create opportunity for you,” which was the impetus to run for office herself, she said.

Two years later, on Nov. 6, 2018, she unseated two-term incumbent Representative Mimi Walters, a Republican.

Hockey pucks, police shootings

Like Porter, Republican Pete Stauber was sworn in Thursday, representing Minnesota’s 8th congressional district.

Stauber had two successful careers — in hockey and law enforcement — before he turned to politics.

As a college hockey player, he captained the Lake Superior State University men’s team to a 1988 national championship. The team was invited to the White House and met with then-President Ronald Reagan.

He also played professional hockey with the Detroit Red Wings Organization.

After hockey, he joined the Duluth (Minnesota) Police Department, where he was shot in the head by a criminal suspect in 1995. He retired as an area police commander in 2017.

A year later, he ran as a Republican who supports the rights of gun owners, and was able to win Minnesota’s 8th — a staunch Democratic district. He became only its second Republican in 71 years.

He and his wife, Jodi, an Iraqi war veteran, have four children, three teenaged sons ages 16,17 and 18, and a 12-year-old daughter.

Stauber joins the House as the majority shifts to Democrats. He said his priorities are jobs and the economy, and noted that “67 percent of the legislation passed on a bipartisan basis in the last Congress.”

“We are going to do it again,” he said.

About an hour before he was sworn in, Stauber showed a visitor to his office his new lapel pin, which identified him as a U.S. representative. “Look at you! You’re official,” the visitor exclaimed.

Challenges of new job, new city

Finding a place to live has always been a challenge for legislators who have to budget staff, flights to and from their home states to Washington, and high housing costs around the Capitol.

Stauber is choosing to live with three other congressmen in a townhouse, as his wife stays with the children in Minnesota. Describing his Washington bedroom as the size of a shed, he said it is furnished with a bunk bed so one child can visit at a time.

Porter has arranged child care for her three children in California until the end of the school year, when they might move to the nation’s capital.

Meanwhile, she is renting a one-room studio apartment with a “tiny, tiny little kitchen.”

Porter said when her children visit, she will pull out a sofa bed that touches her bed, creating “one big place” to sleep — kind of “like camping out.”

Except within distance of one of the most powerful lawmaking institutions in the world.
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A U.S. immigration judge has halted deportation proceedings against a mentally disabled Hispanic man living in Pennsylvania whose case received media attention because of the circumstances surrounding his 2017 detention and interrogation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  

Immigration judge John Carle ordered the termination of removal proceedings against Guillermo Peralta Martinez because of concerns over the “reliability of the information” in the statements he made to ICE given his mental incapacity.

Specifically, Carle said the government could not provide “clear and convincing evidence” that Peralta was a Mexican national as asserted, because of “numerous inconsistencies” in the sworn statements contained in the standard form filed by ICE after an arrest. The judge, however, did allow the ICE account to be entered into the record.

The judge’s ruling in late December brings an end to a case that began in February 2017 when Peralta, who has no criminal record, was detained by ICE agents in the small rural town of York Springs, Pennsylvania, where he lives. Peralta was going to work when agents stopped him while looking for an undocumented Hispanic man suspected of committing crimes. Peralta was questioned, then held for two months in a detention facility in nearby York until his neighbors collected enough money to post his $5,000 bail.  

Since January 2017, when the Trump administration took office, ICE agents have stepped up enforcement efforts against foreigners living in the United States illegally.

According to data released by ICE in December, 159,000 undocumented immigrants were arrested during the 2018 fiscal year that ended September 30, an increase of 11 percent from the previous year. Just over 256,000 were deported, a 13 percent increase from fiscal year 2017. Even those who have no criminal records have been detained and deported, a policy change from the last years of the Obama administration, when those who had not committed serious crimes were released after being picked up.

Media attention

Peralta’s case drew media attention because of his mental impairment. VOA and the Philadelphia Inquirer both reported on Peralta’s detention and subsequent court case as an example of ICE overreach in its enforcement policy.

Peralta, a stocky man who appears to be in his mid-30s, has no idea know how old he is, where he was born or how long he has lived in Pennsylvania.

Interviewed by VOA a few months after his release from jail, he spoke haltingly in Spanish, suffering from a speech impediment that made the few words and short sentences he uttered almost unintelligible. Asked to recall his arrest, he simply remembered that, “They took my keys and threw my lunch away.”

An expert in forensic neuropsychology who later examined Peralta testified to Judge Carle’s court that Peralta suffers from cognitive loss and mild-to-moderate mental retardation.

‘Appropriate oversight’ needed

Craig Shagin, an immigration lawyer in Pennsylvania who has been handling Peralta’s case on a pro-bono basis, welcomed Carle’s decision as “an appropriate act of justice” by the immigration court. 

“The court did its job and Judge Carle came up with a good opinion,” Shagin told VOA.

However, he expressed disappointment that there was “no judicial examination of ICE’s practices” in this case, which he described as an example of overzealous action by ICE agents. “What people should be thinking about instead of calling for abolishing ICE is how to develop appropriate oversight of its activities.” 

Because of the partial U.S. government shutdown, ICE was unavailable for comment. In previous statements, ICE has dismissed criticism over its enforcement actions, saying they “are conducted with integrity and professionalism.”

In his defense brief, Shagin pointed out that there was no evidence Peralta was doing anything suspicious when the agents detained him. “It is unlikely he would have been questioned regarding his citizenship but for Guillermo’s Hispanic appearance,” Shagin wrote.

As his case proceeded through the immigration court system, Guillermo Peralta continued living in his small basement apartment in York Springs, supporting himself by working at odd jobs in the region. There has been no immediate reaction to the court’s ruling by neighbors who watch out for him.     
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Mexico has formally asked the United States for an “an exhaustive investigation” into a Jan. 1 incident in which U.S. agents fired non-lethal weapons into Mexico to stop migrants from breaching the border. 

In a statement released Thursday, the Mexican Foreign Ministry said it lamented any violent acts along its border and repeated its call for an investigation into a similar incident on Nov. 25. 

Rock throwing leads to tear gas

Early on New Year’s Day, U.S. border agents fired tear gas and pepper spray across the border to stop about 150 migrants trying to breach the border fence near San Diego. 

At the time, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the migrants tried to climb over or crawl under the fence, but the agency said that the tear gas had been used against migrants throwing rocks, different from those trying to cross into the United States.

“No agents witnessed any of the migrants at the fence line, including children, experiencing effects of the chemical agents, which were targeted at the rock throwers further away,” the statement released Tuesday said. 

The migrants trying to breach the fence are a part of the caravans that brought more than 7,000 Central Americans to the Mexican border city of Tijuana. 

Trump’s hardline stance

U.S. President Donald Trump and members of his administration have taken a hardline stance toward the Central American migrants escaping poverty and violence, telling his supporters at a rally that the migrants should turn around and go home because they will not be allowed into the United States. 

He also deployed thousands of troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and is demanding Congress approve funding for his desired border wall.

There have been protests in Tijuana against the migrants, as well as clashes between the migrants and authorities from both Mexico and the United States as they protest the long wait times and some try to cross the border.
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A report released by a special safety commission in Parkland, Fla. — the site of a high school shooting last year — recommended arming teachers to secure schools.

On Feb. 14, 2018, a shooter killed 17 people with a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle. While the massacre drew national attention to the larger question of gun control in the United States, it also prompted a months-long local investigation into how the shooter was able to perpetrate the mass slaying, and how similar events may be prevented in the future.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission released over 400 pages covering details of the shooting, identifying security problems and making recommendations.

Among the recommendations was the expansion of a program that allows teachers and staff members to carry concealed firearms to defend students in the event of an active shooter.

“School districts and charter schools should permit the most expansive use of the Guardian Program under existing law to allow personnel — who volunteer, are properly selected, thoroughly screened and extensively trained — to carry concealed firearms on campuses for self-protection and the protection of other staff and students,” the report read.

The current Guardian Program, signed into law by outgoing Republican Gov. Rick Scott shortly after the shooting last year, currently only allows administrators or non-teaching staff to receive firearm training.

In April 2018, the Broward County School Board voted against adopting the program, which would have given Broward County schools over $67 million to train and arm teachers, according to the Eagle Eye, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School’s newspaper.

This week’s report also recommended a full internal investigation of the Broward County sheriff’s office, which responded first to the shooting, to “address all of the actions or inactions of personnel on February 14th, 2018.”

The committee, which includes sheriffs, state politicians and parents of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas victims, among others, first met in April 2018, setting January 2019 as its deadline to submit a preliminary report. During the second half of 2018, the commission held monthly meetings interviewing witnesses and reviewing “a massive amount of evidence,” according to the report.
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The Trump administration is considering Jim Webb, a former Democratic senator from Virginia who also served as Navy secretary under Republican President Ronald Reagan, to be the next defense secretary, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Citing an unnamed official, the Times said Vice President Mike Pence and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney had reached out to Webb. It said what it described as a senior Defense Department official confirmed Webb’s name had been circulating at the White House.

Jim Mattis stepped down as secretary of defense Tuesday, and President Donald Trump said a day later he had essentially fired Mattis, a retired Marine general whose letter of resignation was seen as a sharp rebuke to the Republican president.

Mattis resigned after Trump’s surprise decisions to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria and half of the 14,000-strong contingent in Afghanistan. Trump has named Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing Co. executive who was Mattis’ deputy, as acting defense secretary.

The Times said Webb could potentially allow Trump to bypass “more hawkish Republicans whose names have been floated to replace Jim Mattis.” 

It said Republican Sens. Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham and former Republican Sen. Jim Talent had also been mentioned as possible replacements for Mattis.

The White House declined to comment on the Times report.

The Times said Webb did not respond to a request for comment. 

Webb, 72, is a decorated war veteran who served in the Vietnam War, the author of 10 books and an Emmy Award-winning journalist and filmmaker.

A former U.S. senator from Virginia, Webb ran a long-shot campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. 

“Americans don’t like the extremes to which both parties have moved in recent years and, quite frankly, neither do I,” he said in October 2015 when announcing he was dropping his bid.
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Donald Trump declared himself “the most popular president in the history of the Republican Party” on Wednesday. Yet his allies fear a primary challenge from a high-profile Republican could doom his re-election.

The concern was outlined in a private email shared among Republican National Committee members hours after the GOP’s last failed presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, lashed out at Trump’s character and global leadership in an opinion article published in The Washington Post. Romney is set to be sworn in as Utah’s junior senator on Thursday.

His scathing message was widely interpreted as a sign of encouragement for Republicans including outgoing Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retiring Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake to take on Trump. While a successful primary challenge is highly unlikely given Trump’s grip on the GOP base, some fear it would consume energy and resources badly needed by Trump, who is facing record-low approval ratings and signs of revolt among suburban voters.

Win or lose, any primary challenge would almost certainly hurt Trump’s re-election, warned RNC member Jevon Williams of the Virgin Islands.

“Messrs. Romney, Flake, and Kasich will continue chasing their fantasy of being president, even if that means destroying our party and denying President Trump re-election,” Williams wrote to fellow RNC members in a message obtained by The Associated Press. “Look, the political history is clear. No Republican president opposed for re-nomination has ever won re-election.”

Kasich was clearly encouraged by Romney’s criticism of the president.

“Welcome to the fray, (at)MittRomney,” Kasich wrote in a Twitter post Wednesday sharing Romney’s article.

Kasich adviser John Weaver said it’s been “awful lonely” for Kasich in recent years as one of the GOP’s most vocal Trump critics.

“It’s not so lonely now,” Weaver said.

Kasich, who leaves office later this month, is taking steps to strengthen his organization ahead of a possible run by adding paid staff and volunteers to his political and finance teams.

His advisers say he has yet to decide whether to challenge Trump — either as a Republican or as an independent — although Kasich was quick to visit New Hampshire, the base of his last presidential run, after the November midterms.

The debate among Republicans is how — and whether — to protect Trump. Williams called on his RNC colleagues to change party rules to make it harder for a viable primary challenge to take shape.

​Currently, any candidate who wins a plurality of delegates from five states can be nominated from the national convention floor. That number, which was higher in past years, was lowered at the 2016 convention in response to concerns from grassroots activists. Now some of those activists, loyal to Trump, fear the potential consequences. 

Incumbents in either party bring universal name recognition and massive institutional support to their re-election campaigns, and an insurgent effort to deny Trump the nomination would almost certainly fail. But there is still ample room for a potential spoiler to enter the race to try to deny Trump the support needed to win the general election.

Primary challengers in 1980 and 1992 helped weaken then-Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, who were ultimately defeated in November.

Still, little has come of recent discussions in South Carolina and New Hampshire, where local officials hoped to take steps to block potential Trump challengers. RNC officials now say the national GOP’s rules cannot be changed before the 2020 national convention.

Former RNC member Saul Anuzis of Michigan said Trump’s team missed an opportunity.

“Nobody wants a primary. It’s not healthy for us,” Anuzis said. “You’ll have the Democrats attacking Trump and some Republicans attacking Trump. How does that help us?”

Trump, whose party suffered deep losses in the November midterm elections, shrugged off the prospect of a serious primary challenge.

“They say I am the most popular president in the history of the Republican Party,” he told reporters.

Gallup found late last month that just 39 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s job performance, a mark lower than any president in either party at this point in his presidency since at least 1954. That said, 89 percent of Republicans approved of Trump’s job performance.

Trump’s behavior could shift sharply in the second half of his first term as he prepares for the 2020 contest.

The president is facing pressure from the special counsel in the Russia probe and an impending onslaught of Democratic investigations. That could push Trump to cater exclusively to the base of voters he is concerned about losing, according to a Republican close to the White House who has consulted on the early re-election efforts.

That instinct would echo the president’s double-down, scorched-earth response to the crises that hit his 2016 campaign, including the “Access Hollywood” tape about forcing himself on women, and could make it harder to woo the independent voters or disaffected Democrats he may well need.

The president is eager to unleash his re-election machinery and has pushed to collect pledges of loyalty from across the GOP to quell any hint of an insurrection, according to a campaign official and a Republican familiar with the inner workings of the campaign. Neither was authorized to speak publicly and both requested anonymity.

The Trump team has discussed the possibility of a challenge from someone such as Kasich or Flake and now, one adviser said, Romney would enter the conversation.

Most in Trump’s orbit were not worried about Romney, but others worried that the new article, which was published to great buzz, was merely the opening salvo in coordinated effort by some Republicans to deny the president the party’s nomination.

Publicly, RNC officials were united behind the president.

“There is no concern or expectation at the RNC of a primary challenge for President Trump at all,” said RNC member Bill Palatucci of New Jersey, a state where Republicans suffered painful losses in November. “There may be disagreements, but you express those disagreements in private. As difficult as a midterm cycle that we had, everybody still wants a Republican president and not Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.”

Romney himself insisted that his article was not intended to signal any interest in a third Republican presidential bid, but he declined to endorse Trump’s re-election.

“I haven’t decided who I’m going to endorse in 2020,” Romney said on CNN. He continued: “I’m not running again. We’ll see if someone else does in a Republican primary or not. Time will tell.”
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Nancy Pelosi is once again Washington’s most powerful woman, poised to reclaim the U.S. House of Representatives speaker’s gavel Thursday as opponent-in-chief to an impulsive and unpredictable president.

Keeping Donald Trump in check will be among the California Democrat’s top challenges as she presides over the House of Representatives through the 2020 elections, when her party aims to dethrone the Republican commander in chief.

Pelosi is almost certain to win Thursday’s House vote for speaker, a position she held for four years from 2007, when she made history as the first woman ever to rise to that post.

When outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan yields to the 78-year-old, she will again become the nation’s third most senior official and seal her reputation as one of the great survivors in American politics.

In her first stint, Pelosi was a strong opposing force to Republican George W. Bush in the final two years of his presidency. Her role as a restraint on Trump would be similar.

But she will also need to keep the reins tight on her own caucus, some of whose newly empowered progressives are seeking swift punitive measures against Trump in the coming months.

She and the Democratic leadership would have the power to block Republican legislation, hamstringing large parts of Trump’s agenda ranging from proposed new tax cuts to building a wall on the border with Mexico.

And Pelosi could make life for Trump much harder if she uses subpoena power to compel administration officials to testify before Congress or turn over key documents, or if she launches impeachment proceedings.

So far, she has spoken out against using such a powerful political cudgel against him, arguing that the explosive step would likely mobilize Republican voters eager to protect the president.

In her reprised role, she will have to thread a political needle, standing up to Trump when needed but also showing that her party is capable of working with the president to pass legislation.

Her immediate task: finding a way to help end a standoff over Trump’s border wall demand that has led to a partial government shutdown now stretching to 13 days.

Pelosi and other congressional leaders met with Trump Wednesday but failed to secure a deal to end the impasse.

Three weeks earlier, at a remarkable Oval Office confrontation with cameras rolling, Pelosi showed she was not afraid to go toe to toe with Trump in a public forum when he appeared to belittle her effort to secure support for her speakership.

“Please don’t characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory,” a defiant Pelosi said.

‘Respected,’ not hated

Pelosi is unquestionably among the savviest political leaders of her generation. She shepherded then president Barack Obama’s health law through the House to its contentious, historic passage in 2010.

Perhaps for that reason she is still seen by some as a liability eight years later, with Republicans presenting her as the ultimate liberal bogeywoman.

“Can you imagine Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House?” Trump asked a crowd at a Minnesota rally in October. “Don’t do that to me!”

Pelosi’s big comeback was no foregone conclusion. But she shrewdly navigated a simmering party power struggle that saw dozens of House Democrats and candidates signaling their desire for change at the top.

The internal resistance largely stems from Pelosi’s broad unpopularity among voters. But in an interview published Wednesday, she pushed back at the notion that she is reviled.

“I don’t necessarily feel hated. I feel respected,” she told Elle magazine. “They wouldn’t come after me if I were not effective.”

First elected in 1987

At least in part, Pelosi’s reputation is shaped by years of rightwing attacks. Conservatives depict her, the wife of an investment millionaire from California, as the embodiment of a leftist elite.

She is accused of everything from wanting to raise taxes for middle-class families to supporting a massive influx of illegal immigrants.

For three decades, Pelosi has represented California’s 12th congressional district, which includes San Francisco, a stronghold of left-wing politics, counter-culture and gay rights regarded by many heartland conservatives as a true Gomorrah.

Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro was born in Baltimore to a political family with Italian roots. Both her father and brother were mayors of the East Coast port city.

After studying political science in Washington, she moved with her husband to San Francisco, where they raised five children.

First elected to the House in 1987, Pelosi rose through the ranks to lead the chamber’s Democrats beginning in 2002.

Steeled by countless political struggles, Pelosi has largely managed to hold her diverse caucus together.

U.S. politics requires donning “a suit of armor” and the ability “to take a punch,” she has said.
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As a staff sergeant with the Marines in Iraq, Paul Whelan enjoyed fine cigars and showed an affinity for Russia, even spending two weeks of military leave in Moscow and St. Petersburg instead of at home in the U.S. with family and friends.

The 48-year-old Detroit-area man had an account on a Russian social media site, where he posted festive notes on the country’s national holidays.

Now, he’s under arrest there on espionage allegations.

Whelan has visited Russia since at least 2007 and was there again for a friend’s wedding, showing other guests around, said his twin brother, David Whelan. He was scheduled to return home Jan. 6, the brother said.

U.S. officials are seeking answers about Paul Whelan’s arrest on spying charges. The Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, said Whelan was caught “during an espionage operation,” but gave no details.

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman Jr. visited Whelan on Wednesday in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison, the State Department said.

“Ambassador Huntsman expressed his support for Mr. Whelan and offered the embassy’s assistance,” it said. He also spoke by phone with Whelan’s family, the statement added, but did not disclose any details because of “privacy considerations for Mr. Whelan and his family.”

Posts on Russian social media

According to what to appears to be Paul Whelan’s profile on the popular Russian social media platform VKontakte, he posted “God save President Trump” — flanked by flag emojis — on Inauguration Day in 2016. A 2010 post referred to then-President Barack Obama as a “moron.”

Another photo showed Whelan wearing a T-shirt of the Moscow soccer club Spartak. In March 2014, around the time of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Whelan suggested that “Putin can have Alaska, as long as he takes Sarah Palin, too!” And a photo posted in August shows Whelan attending a security conference organized by the U.S. State Department.

Brother not a spy

David Whelan disputes Russia’s allegation that his brother is a spy.

Former CIA agent John Sipher agrees, saying Paul Whelan’s spotty military career would keep U.S. intelligence from hiring him for sensitive operations.

“He absolutely does not fit the profile of someone we would use in a place like Moscow,” said Sipher, who once ran the agency’s Russia operations in Moscow. “Due to the oppressive level of counterintelligence scrutiny in Moscow, we do not put people without diplomatic immunity in harm’s way. Nor do we handle low-level intelligence collection operations in a place like Moscow.”

Military service

Paul Whelan attended high school in Ann Arbor, west of Detroit, and joined the Marine Corps Reserves in 1994. A decade later, he was made a staff sergeant and was deployed twice to Iraq, in 2004 and 2006.

His last duty assignment was with the Marine Air Control Group 38 Headquarters, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing; Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, California. He specialized in administrative posts.

While stationed in Iraq, Whelan was part of something called the Lamplighter’s Club, a group of service members who got together to enjoy good cigars.

“It’s one of the unique pleasures that anyone can take advantage of, as everyone should take advantage of a fine cigar once in a while,” Whelan said in a 2007 interview posted on the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing page of the Marine Corps website.

Whelan also was part of “The Rest and Recuperation Leave Program,” which authorized 15 days of leave to service members on yearlong deployments to Iraq, according to another 2007 story on the website. The military paid for the travel and most service members chose to return home, but others could travel abroad.

​Time in Russia, court-martial

Whelan spent his two weeks in Russia, saying in the interview that the leave program “gives those of us who are single an opportunity to travel throughout the world wherever we want to go and experience the diversity of culture.”

During his military career, Whelan received awards that included the Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation and Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, but he ran afoul of the military and was convicted in 2008 on larceny-related charges at a special court-martial. Whelan’s rank was stripped, he was demoted to private and discharged for bad conduct.

After the military

He went on to start Kingsmead Arsenal, an online firearms business, from his Novi, Michigan, home, and worked for Troy, Michigan-based temporary staffing firm Kelly Services until 2017.

Whelan testified in a 2013 deposition in a federal court case involving Kelly Services that he worked as senior manager of global security and investigations for the company.

He was hired in 2017 by Auburn Hills, Michigan-based BorgWarner and is the auto parts supplier’s global security director.

“He is responsible for overseeing security at our facilities in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and at other company locations around the world,” company spokeswoman Kathy Graham said Tuesday in a statement.

She said BorgWarner does not have any facilities in Russia.
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