Kayaker who faked death and fled US taken into custody in Wisconsin: Officials
Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office
(GREEN LAKE, Wis.) — Ryan Borgwardt, the husband and father who authorities said faked his own death and fled the U.S., is back in custody in Wisconsin, according to the Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll will announce more details at a news conference at 11 a.m. ET Wednesday.
The case began on Aug. 11, when Borgwardt texted his wife that he was turning his kayak around on Green Lake and heading to shore soon, Podoll said.
But the dad of three never came home.
Responders found Borgwardt’s overturned kayak and life jacket in the lake and believed he drowned, officials said.
Crews scoured the lake for weeks using divers, drones, sonar and cadaver K-9s, but never found him, officials said.
In October, investigators discovered Borgwardt’s name had been checked by law enforcement in Canada two days after he vanished on the lake, the sheriff said.
Authorities also learned Borgwardt had been communicating with a woman from Uzbekistan, the sheriff said.
Borgwardt’s other suspicious behavior included: clearing his browsers the day he disappeared, inquiring about moving funds to foreign banks, obtaining a new passport and getting a new life insurance policy, the sheriff said.
Authorities determined Borgwardt was alive out of the country, but didn’t know exactly where he was located. Authorities made contact with a woman who speaks Russian, and on Nov. 11, they reached Borgwardt through that woman, authorities said.
Borgwardt told police he was safe but didn’t reveal his location, the sheriff said.
Podoll said Borgwardt did reveal to them how he faked his death.
“He stashed an e-bike near the boat launch. He paddled his kayak in a child-sized floating boat out into the lake. He overturned the kayak and dumped his phone in the lake,” the sheriff said. “He paddled the inflatable boat to shore and got on his e-bike and rode through the night to Madison, [Wisconsin]. In Madison, he boarded a bus and went to Detroit, and then the Canadian border. He continued on the bus to an airport and got on a plane.”
One of the reasons Borgwardt picked Green Lake is because it’s one of the deepest lakes in the state, Podoll said.
(NEW YORK) — The FBI has interviewed multiple individuals about Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s personal life as part of its background check investigation, asking questions about alleged extramarital affairs, his relationship with alcohol and his character, according to sources familiar with the matter.
As part of the background investigation, the FBI reached out to people in Hegseth’s past, including individuals Hegseth has known much of his adult life, according to multiple sources familiar with the FBI’s outreach and other sources briefed on the process.
Sources tell ABC News that Hegseth sat for an interview with the FBI in recent weeks. The Armed Services Committee is expected to hold Hegseth’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday, ahead of President-elect Trump’s inauguration.
On Friday, the top Senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., were briefed on the results of Hegseth’s FBI background investigation by a representative from Trump’s transition team, according to sources familiar with the matter. The background investigation materials were also made available for Wicker and Reed to review if they chose to do so. At this point, the FBI’s findings are only being shared with Wicker and Reed, according to sources familiar with discussions between the committee and Trump’s representatives.
A spokesperson for Reed declined to comment to ABC News, and a spokesperson for Wicker did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The extent of the traditionally thorough FBI background check is an indication that the Senate could be provided with more information about Hegseth’s personal life, amid reports, disputed by Hegseth, about alleged infidelity and personal behavior that some senators have found concerning.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who described her December meeting with Hegseth as a “good, substantive discussion,” told reporters last month that she “pressed” Hegseth “on both his position on military issues as well as the allegations against him.”
The Maine Republican said she would wait for the FBI review to help her determine how to vote.
“I, obviously, always wait until we have an FBI background check, and one is underway in the case of Mr. Hegseth, and I wait to see the committee hearing before reaching a final decision,” Collins, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, said in December.
Other Republican senators have downplayed some of the reports as “anonymous” allegations.
“If people have an allegation to make, come forward and make it,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in an interview on “Meet the Press” on Dec. 15. “We’ll decide whether or not it’s credible.”
As part of the process, the FBI has spoken to individuals in Minnesota, Hegseth’s home state, according to sources familiar with the outreach.
The FBI declined to comment on the details and focus of its inquiry. A spokesperson for Hegseth declined to comment. The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The New York Times has also published a 2018 email from Hegseth’ s mother, Penelope Hegseth, to her son, in which she said he mistreated women for years, amid his divorce from his first wife. She later told the newspaper that she regretted her original sentiments and expressed regret to her son in a follow up email. ABC News has not obtained or reviewed the email.
The Monterey Police Department released a report last month detailing how a woman told investigators in October 2017 that she had encountered Hegseth at an event afterparty at a California hotel where both had been drinking, and claimed that he sexually assaulted her.
No charges were filed, although Hegseth subsequently paid the woman as part of a settlement agreement, which Hegseth’s attorney said was only because Hegseth feared his career would suffer if her allegations were made public. The agreement stated that Hegseth made no admission of wrongdoing in the matter.
Hegseth, who has previously said he welcomed the FBI’s work, has denied the allegations against him, writing in the Wall Street Journal that “the press is peddling anonymous story after anonymous story, all meant to smear me and tear me down.”
“It’s a textbook manufactured media takedown. They provide no evidence, no names, and they ignore the legions of people who speak on my behalf. They need to create a bogeyman, because they believe I threaten their institutional insanity,” he wrote in the op-ed.
As ABC News previously reported, the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will review Hegseth’s nomination, has also reached out to the Monterey County, California, district attorney regarding the 2017 sexual assault allegations, and to the conservative veterans’ organization Hegseth once ran following a New Yorker report about alleged financial mismanagement, alcohol abuse and sexist behavior, which Hegseth has denied.
Hegseth has denied claims of alcohol abuse, and said in a podcast interview that he won’t drink if confirmed by the Senate.
“This is the biggest deployment of my life, and there won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I’m doing it,” he said last month in an appearance on “The Megyn Kelly Show.”
(NEW YORK) — Across hours of podcast and television interviews, Army veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth has articulated his plan for a “frontal assault” to reform the Department of Defense from the top down, including by purging “woke” generals, limiting women from some combat roles, eliminating diversity goals and utilizing the “real threat of violence” to reassert the United States as a global power.
As President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for the Secretary of Defense, Hegseth, 44, could have the chance to implement that vision, commanding the country’s more than a million active duty soldiers.
An infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard, Hegseth deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan before leaving the service with the rank of major, according to military records. Hegseth has worked for Fox News since 2014, where he co-hosts “FOX & Friends Weekend.” Once a critic of Trump’s foreign policy and military stances during Trump’s 2016 campaign, Hegseth grew to become one of Trump’s fiercest on-air defenders.
“Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First. With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice – Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,” Trump said announcing the nomination.
A New York Times best-selling author, Hegseth has frequently commented on military policy and suggested one of his first orders of business would be firing any generals who supported the Pentagon’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
“First of all, you got to fire the Chairman Joint of the Chiefs and obviously going to bring in a new Secretary of Defense, but any general that was involved — general, admiral, whatever — that was involved in, any of the DEI woke s—, has got to go,” Hegseth said during a recent interview on the “Shawn Ryan Show” podcast. “Either you’re in for warfighting, and that’s it. That’s the only litmus test we care about.”
Hegseth had preemptively defended the move, saying it would be a return to normalcy for soldiers rather than a “MAGA takeover.”
While Hegseth has described countries like Russia and China as threats, he has framed the military’s biggest threat as an internal one, arguing that “wokeness” divided the military internally and created an issue that adversaries can exploit.
“I think our biggest threat is internal. I think we’re committing cultural suicide, and we’ve lost complete focus on the basics and building blocks of what made Western civilization in America exceptional, fruitful, prosperous, strong, free,” Hegseth said on the podcast.
Hegseth has proposed a wholesale purge of military officials who have supported DEI policies, urging a “frontal assault right back at what’s been done to this military from the top and to the bottom.”
“The dumbest phrase on planet Earth in the military is our diversity is our strength,” Hegseth said on the podcast, arguing that uniformity between soldiers is a key to the military’s strength.
“Every time I hear a military leader say [diversity is our strength], I throw up in my mouth a little bit more, because if they believe it, it shows you how sideways and how indoctrinated they are,” Hegseth said on “The Right Take With Mark Tapson” podcast.
While 17.5% of active-duty military personnel are women, Hegseth has argued that military leaders should acknowledge that their main constituency is “strong, normal men,” rebuffing efforts to diversify the ranks of the armed services.
“There aren’t enough lesbians in San Francisco to staff the 82nd Airborne like you need, you need the boys in Kentucky and Texas and North Carolina and Wisconsin,” Hegseth said on Tapson’s podcast earlier this year.
Hegseth was on the “Take It Outside with Jay Cutler and Sam Mackey” podcast and said that transgender soldiers are “not deployable” because they are “reliant on chemicals” and suggested that women should not serve in certain combat roles.
“Everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat means casualties are worse,” Hegseth said on Ryan’s podcast, arguing that men are “more capable” in combat roles because of biological factors.
An ardent defender of the president-elect, Hegseth has argued that the United States military under Trump was more effective by posing both “uncertainty” and the “real threat of violence.”
“At least under Trump, there were missiles falling on terrorists’ heads,” Hegseth said on the “Man of War” podcast with Rafa Conde. “They knew he meant business. Kim Jong Un, even though it didn’t work, knew Trump meant business. Fire and fury was a real thing. Uncertainty is a real thing. The real threat of violence is a real thing, and none of that exists under these globalists who think they can sanction their way.”
He has also criticized international institutions like the United Nations as a “farce” and “giant joke” while advocating a military policy that aims to end long-term conflicts through decisive action.
“We expect this clinically sanitized, you know, no civilian casualties. Everything’s going to be perfect. No one’s going to get hurt, everything. It’s just not how war operates, and that’s unfortunate,” Hegseth said on “The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe” podcast. “But if we try to do it with kid gloves or with surgical gloves, we’re never really going to get rid of, actually exterminate the enemies that we need to defeat to create a peace on the other side.”
(NEW YORK) — The Texas Board of Education will vote Friday on whether to implement its new K-12 curriculum that calls for expanding Bible teachings in classrooms, after signaling its passage in a preliminary vote.
The curriculum includes Biblical and Christian lessons about Moses, the story of the Good Samaritan, the Golden Rule, readings from The Book of Genesis, and more. The accuracy of the materials has come under scrutiny. For example, the curriculum claims “Abraham Lincoln and other leading abolitionists relied on a deep Christian faith,” though Lincoln’s religion has historically been debated.
The instructional materials, called Bluebonnet Learning, are developed by the state, according to the Texas Education Agency. The lessons would be optional, but districts can receive at least $40 per student for using state-approved materials, according to local legislation.
Some supporters of instituting religion in the curriculum say that these religious texts are important for the historical context of U.S. history and can instill moral values in the classroom. While some critics said, this violates the First Amendment right to freedom of religion for students and teachers, forcing classrooms to engage in Christian instruction.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has spoken out in support of the Texas Education Agency’s curriculum after singing legislation directing the Texas Education Agency to purchase and develop instructional materials.
“The materials will also allow our students to better understand the connection of history, art, community, literature, and religion on pivotal events like the signing of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Movement, and the American Revolution,” Abbott said in a May statement. “I thank the TEA for their work to ensure our students receive a robust educational foundation to succeed so that we can build a brighter Texas for generations to come.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, an advocacy organization centering on the separation of state and church, has criticized the curriculum, claiming leaders are determined to “turn the state’s public schools into Christian training grounds.”
“The curriculum targets the youngest, most impressionable elementary students, starting by introducing kindergartners to Jesus,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor said in an online statement ahead of the vote. “Religious instruction is the purview of parents, not proselytizing school boards. This is a shameful ruse by Christian nationalists in Texas who see the schools as a mission field.”
States like Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and others have been behind the push to enforce Christian-based school requirements, including the implementation of Bibles, the Ten Commandments and other religious doctrines in schools.
