Bolton: ‘No Money Was Paid’ to North Korea
National-security adviser John Bolton pushed back Sunday against reports that the U.S. may have paid North Korea $2 million for the medical care of Otto Warmbier.
Asked by Fox host Chris Wallace whether any money “however it was disguised” was paid to North Korea, Bolton said no.
“Absolutely not, and I think that’s the key point,” he replied. “It’s very clear to me from my looking into it in the past few days, no money was paid. That is clear.”
The former U.S. envoy to the United Nations did however acknowledge that North Korea appears to have asked for reimbursement for Warmbier’s medical bills and said State Department envoy Joseph Yun signed a document pledging to pay them.
“It appears that they did,” the national-security adviser said of the dictatorship’s request. “This occurred before I came into the administration, but that’s my understanding, yes,”
Warmier, then a 21-year-old University of Virginia student, was arrested in North Korea in 2016 for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel, and subsequently sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. He was returned to the U.S. in 2017 in a vegetative state and died several days later.
Bolton said he “doesn’t know the circumstances” of the document the State Department representative signed promising the U.S. would foot Warmbier’s medical bills.
“I think when people leave government sometimes their recollection of things that happened inside tend to be a little bit different from what actually happened,” he remarked.
President Trump also pushed back on reports about a payment to North Korea.
“We did not pay money for our great Otto,” he told reporters. “There was no money paid. There was a fake news report that money was paid.”
