National Roundup

Massachusetts
Ex-Harvard coach, businessman charged in $1.5M bribes scheme
BOSTON (AP) — The former fencing coach at Harvard and a wealthy Maryland businessman were arrested Monday on accusations that the coach accepted $1.5 million in bribes in exchange for helping the businessman get his two sons into the Ivy League school as recruited fencers.

Peter Brand, 67, who was fired by Harvard last year, and Jie “Jack” Zhao, 61, of Potomac, Maryland, face a charge of conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery. Their arrest comes more than a year after a newspaper reported that Brand sold his home for nearly double its assessed value to Zhao. Prosecutors say Zhao also paid for Brand’s car and made college tuition payments on behalf of Brand’s son.

“Today’s arrests show how Peter Brand’s and Jie Zhao’s plan to circumvent the college admissions process ended up backfiring on both of them. Now they are accused of exchanging more than $1.5 million in bribes for their own personal benefit,” Joseph Bonavolonta, head of the FBI Boston Division, said in an emailed statement.

Emails seeking comment were sent to lawyers for the two men.

The case is separate from the recent college admissions scandal in which an admission consultant ran a scheme to get kids into top universities across the country with rigged test scores or fake athletic credentials. But the allegations are similar.

Questions about the relationship between Brand and Zhao first surfaced last year when The Boston Globe reported that Brand, received nearly $1 million in 2016 for the three-bedroom house on a quarter-acre in Needham, which was assessed at the time at $549,300, Zhao never lived in the home and sold it for a steep loss 17 months later, the newspaper reported.

Zhao, who is CEO of a telecommunications company, told The Globe in an interview last year that he purchased the home as an investment and as a favor to Brand and denied it was done to help his son get into the prestigious university. Brand was fired in July 2019 for violating Harvard’s conflict-of-interest policy.

Prosecutors say Brand told an unnamed co-conspirator about Zhao in 2012: “Jack doesn’t need to take me anywhere and his boys don’t have to be great fencers. All I need is a good incentive to recruit them.” In 2013, Zhao gave $1 million to a fencing charity, which in turn gave $100,000 to a charitable entity established by Brand and his spouse, according to court documents. Zhao’s older son was admitted to Harvard as a fencing recruit in December of that year, prosecutors said.

Zhao also paid the mortgage for Brand’s Needham home before buying the home for well above its value, according to court documents. Brand used the money from that sale to pay $1.3 million for a condo in Cambridge, authorities said. Zhao’s younger son started at Harvard in 2017 and is currently a member of the fencing team, prosecutors said.

Virginia
Case dismissed against lawmaker accused of damaging monument
PORTSMOUTH, Va. (AP) — A judge in Virginia dismissed charges on Monday that were filed against a prominent Black state senator after police said that she and others conspired to damage a Confederate monument in the city of Portsmouth.

The Virginian-Pilot reports the charges against state Sen. Louise Lucas were dismissed at the request of the city’s top prosecutor, who said the elements of the charges were not properly met.

Portsmouth’s police department charged Lucas and several others in August with conspiracy to commit a felony and injury to a monument in excess of $1,000. The charges stemmed from a protest in June that drew hundreds of people to the city’s Confederate monument. Heads were ripped off some of the monument’s statues while one was pulled down, critically injuring a demonstrator.

The police department had filed the charges without the cooperation of the city’s prosecutor. And Lucas’s allies viewed the case as shamelessly political. The Democrat is the state Senate’s President Pro Tempore. She was charged in a warrant the day before state lawmakers met to work on various police reforms, including ones Lucas championed.

Legal observers also questioned the strength of the case because it was based on Lucas’s words, not her actions. The senator’s attorney, Don Scott, had said she left the scene hours before the statue was torn down.

Portsmouth is a majority Black city of nearly 100,000 people. The damage to the memorial and the protester’s injuries prompted blame against protesters and police alike. Lucas had called for the resignation of Portsmouth’s police chief, Angela Greene, who is also Black.

The dismissed case is only the latest fallout stemming from the June protest. Shortly before the judge’s decision Monday, Portsmouth’s police chief said she had been fired and planned to sue for wrongful termination.

“I believe I was wrongfully terminated for upholding the law,” Greene said Monday at a news conference.

Greene had said in August that “several individuals conspired and organized to destroy the monument as well as summon hundreds of people to join in felonious acts.”

Charging documents filed by police said Lucas arrived at the monument June 10 and told police they could not arrest anyone who put paint on the memorial.

Police said the 76-year-old approached officers with a warning: “(T)hey are going to put some paint on this thing, and y’all can’t arrest them.”

“(T)hey gonna do it, and you can’t stop them … they got a right, go ahead!,” police claim Lucas said.

Police “informed Senator Lucas that she could not tell people they can do that,” the filing said. “Lucas replied, ‘I’m not telling them to do anything, I’m telling you, you can’t arrest them.’”

William & Mary law professor Timothy Zick told The Associated Press in August that he questioned the strength of the case. He pointed to two phrases in the probable cause: “Go ahead” as well as “I’m not telling them to do anything, I’m telling you, you can’t arrest them.”

Speech that calls for an unlawful action is protected unless it is “directed to inciting an imminent violation and that violation is likely to occur,” Zick said.

“If those are the facts, then the senator’s speech would likely be protected,” Zick wrote in an email in August.