TYB
Part 3 of 3
David Jang did not respond to requests for comment via his website and via the World Olivet Assembly. Mark Spisak, Executive Director of the World Olivet Assembly, did not answer calls to his mobile phone or to a text message.
Pragad was working to protect the company from interference from members of Jang's sect, he said in an April 7th memo to all Newsweek staff, later posted on the company website.
"I know there were concerns several years ago about possible interference in Newsweek by members of the Olivet church," Pragad wrote. "I can tell you that since we became an independent company in late 2018, the newsroom has been absolutely free from any influence by Olivet leaders and I'm no longer a member of or associated with the Olivet church."
Pragad's memo referred to a crisis that rocked Newsweek during the Manhattan District Attorney's investigation of Olivet. In January 2018 the DA searched the premises of Newsweek as part of a money-laundering investigation. Newsweek journalists reported on the investigation until Davis fired Newsweek's editor and other journalists involved in reporting a story about business dealings between IBT Media and Olivet.
Newsweek eventually published the story under its current editor in chief, Nancy Cooper, with a lengthy editor's note detailing efforts of Olivet members and their allies to subvert its reporting. IBT Media, along with co-founder Etienne Uzac, eventually pled guilty to criminal charges. Pragad, who was CEO at the time of the DA raid, bought Uzac's 50 percent stake in Newsweek as part of a corporate restructuring that separated the magazine publisher from IBT Media.
https://www.newsweek.com/christian-university-center-federal-trafficking-fraud-probe-1699857
>Doubt it
they can roll around in their own shit all they want
that's not enough, gotta drag everyone else in