Father Alexander Carlotos of New York will be one of the 17 celebrities to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom next week, the White House announced on Friday. ..
Actor Denzel Washington, gymnast Simone Biles, and soccer star Megan Rapinoe have also received the highest civilian honors in the United States. Presidents often use it to welcome celebrities and reward long-time friends and associates.
Three winners will receive medals after death. I'm Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, Senator John McCain (Arizona), and Richard Tormuka, the leader of the AFL-CIO.
Other winners include former Republican Rep. Gabby Gifors (D-Arizona), who has advocated gun control after being seriously injured in a mass shooting that killed six people in his hometown in 2011. State) and prominent Donald. Trump critic Khizr Khan.
Khan and his wife Gazara appeared as public officials in the 2016 presidential election when they spoke at the Democratic National Convention against the rhetoric of then-candidate Trump's Islamic immigrants. did. Their son, Captain Humayun Khan of the US Army, died in Iraq in 2004.
It is unclear why Biden is only awarding Kizul Khan, not his wife.
Karluoutsos, who lives in Southampton, retired last year as Vicar General of the Archdiocese of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States. The beloved spiritual leader and his family are close to Biden — so close that Carloutos' son Michael arranged the infamous 2015 DC dinner arranged by then-second son Hunter Biden, including Joe Biden. It is reported that he attended. Business associates from photos, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and perhaps Russia.
Hunter Biden wrote in an email to Michael Carlotos at the time: "The reason for dinner is, on the surface, to discuss food security."
The day after dinner, Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, paid Hunter Biden $ 83,000 a month and sat down in the hunter. sent an email to the hunter Thank you for giving him the opportunity to meet his father.
According to the email, the guest list also included Russian billionaire Elena Baturina and her husband Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow. A 2020 report from a Senate Republican-led committee claims that Baturina paid $ 3.5 million to a company related to Hunter Biden in 2014. She is one of the oligarchs who have not yet faced the Biden administration's sanctions in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine this year.