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Last week, 11 students from the prestigious British boarding school Eton made worldwide headlines by scoring a meeting in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Two hour meeting with President Putin," wrote Trenton Bricken, one of the students, on Facebook. "He was small in person but not in presence."
The encounter was noteworthy because Putin is notoriously difficult to access, even as his government continues to be at the center of global controversy—including allegations it's trying to sabotage the U.S. presidential election. The schoolboys managed to secure the meeting at the Kremlin without the knowledge of British officials.
The meeting is of local interest because Trenton Bricken recently interned for one of Oregon's U.S. Congressmen.
Bricken, who just started as a freshman at Duke University, lists a summer 2015 internship on Capitol Hill as part of his resume. Among the congressmen he worked for: U.S. Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.).
He listed his responsibilities as: "Giving tours of the Capitol to visiting constituents, writing response letters on topical legislation or constituents' concerns, attending hearings." (Government documents also show he attended meetings on Walden's behalf.)
Walden's staff could not be immediately reached for comment.
Bricken has yet to reply to messages left with him on social media.
His Twitter feed shows that while he interned for a Republican Congressman and met with Putin, he shows no fondness for Putin's putative BFF, GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump. This spring, Bricken called the prospect of a Trump presidency "terrifying."
Willamette Week