Last August, Harry Dunn, a British 19-year-old, was killed in a car accident by American Anne Sacoolas, who was driving on the wrong side of the road near a U.S. intelligence base north of London. Normally, that would lead to a pretty straightforward investigation, but in this case Sacoolas is the wife of a U.S. government official and therefore has diplomatic immunity. Despite assuring British authorities that she had no intention of leaving the country while the investigation was going on, she did just that and returned to the U.S.
That's escalated into a tense diplomatic standoff between the United States and the United Kingdom. British prime minister Boris Johnson has asked that Sacoolas return and said that he would ask Donald Trump to intervene if she did not. Trump, on the other hand, has said he's sympathetic to Dunn's family but downplayed the significance of Sacoolas's involvement, saying, "The woman was driving on the wrong side of the road. And that can happen, you know. Those are the opposite roads. That happens. I won't say it ever happened to me, but it did."
This week, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn, Harry's parents, arrived in the U.S. hoping to convince Sacoolas to return to the U.K. They were subsequently invited to the White House to speak with a senior official, and were shocked to arrive and realize that official was Trump himself. Recounting the meeting to British media, Charles said she felt that Trump was sincere and empathetic, saying, "When he held my hand, I gripped it a lot tighter and I was honest with him and just said, as I said a while ago, 'If it was your son you would be doing the same as us.' He actually gripped my hand a little bit tighter and said 'Yes I would be.' And that's when he said he would try and look at this from a different angle."
Trump, it turned out, was after more than just a heart-to-heart with the grieving parents though-someone with knowledge of the meeting's planning told the Washington Post that he was hoping for a "hug and make up moment."
The president told them that Anne Sacoolas was waiting in another room, stunning Charles and Dunn. Trump then asked if they would go and speak with her-they declined. As Charles described it, "The bombshell was dropped soon after we walked in the room: Anne Sacoolas was in the building and was willing to meet with us. We made it very clear that, as we've said all along, we will meet with her and we would still love to meet with her, but it has to be on our terms and on U.K. soil."
She continued, "We were a bit shocked but it didn't really make any difference to us, to be perfectly honest. She could have been two miles away; it's just she was in the room next door. Our grief's been locked in for several weeks. It's not appropriate to meet her without therapists and mediators for us as a family but also for her. How can it be comfortable for her to be thrown into a situation like that without therapists and mediators?"
In a statement, family spokesperson Radd Seiger put the blame for the meeting on National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, who invited them to the White House. "It struck us that this meeting was hastily arranged by nincompoops on the run and in particular Mr. O'Brien, who appeared to be extremely uptight and aggressive and did not come across at all well in this meeting which required careful handling and sensitivity."
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