Vue lecture

How U.S. Officials Grappled With the Release of a Triple Murderer

The decision to free an American convicted of murder in a prisoner swap with Venezuela threatened to undercut President Trump’s claims of keeping the worst of the worst out of the United States.

© Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Michael Kozak, a senior State Department diplomat, wondered in an email exchange whether, having obtained the freedom of Dahud Hanid Ortiz, a U.S. Army veteran convicted of murdering three people in Madrid in 2016, the U.S. government might extradite him to Spain.
  •