The Trump administration has closed a criminal investigation into Olivet University, declining to bring human trafficking charges against officials at the Christian institution in Southern California.
The university’s founder, evangelical pastor and media executive David Jang, has been portrayed by some of his followers as the second coming of Jesus Christ and is known for his founding roles in the creation of conservative, evangelical-friendly outlets like The Christian Post. And it was the Post last week that reported on a joint status report filed in U.S. District Court that said:
The parties have recently been informed by an agent from Homeland Security Investigations that no charges are going to be filed against Olivet University or anyone else affiliated with Olivet University that arise out of or are related to Plaintiffs’ claims.
The filing allows a civil lawsuit, filed by former Olivet University students, to continue.
Last year, a Los Angeles Times report detailed allegations from former students and employees at the university, who claimed they’d been put under “near-constant surveillance and stripped of their independence” while enduring a “big brother-like atmosphere on multiple campuses where administrators prevented adults from leaving” and “forced them to work, sometimes for free.”
The university vehemently denied the allegations and pushed back with unsubstantiated claims that the accusers were seeking to manipulate the visa system. But after an investigation by California’s Bureau for Private and Post-Secondary Education, a judge fined Olivet more than $64,000 late last year and ordered the school to cease operations in the state to “protect the public.”
The university, which has faced several legal claims since its 2004 founding, also had to shut down two of its New York campuses after it pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and falsification of business records back in 2020. (The university maintained afterward that it had been “permitted to plead guilty to a misdemeanor offense to fully resolve the matter” and had never pleaded guilty to money laundering or been convicted of it.)
Olivet welcomed the closing of the federal trafficking investigation in a statement, quoting its president as saying:
The real danger came not from Olivet University, but from those individuals who deliberately lied about our school, manipulated the U.S. visa system, and colluded with certain media outlets to spread false narratives. Their goal was never justice — it was to destroy reputations, destabilize institutions, and dishonestly profit from this scheme.
A court is set to have its say on whether the university bears responsibility for any civil infractions, but the question of whether criminal charges are in store seems to have been answered.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
