“I’m not a Scientologist. I don’t have a gun. I’m a Democrat. I’m not part of this craziness at all,” Katherine Feigin told us tonight after we discovered that she had worked for Donald Trump Jr as his executive and personal assistant from 2014 to 2015.
Katherine’s brother, Mark Feigin, is a Los Angeles Scientologist who was arrested on October 19 by the LAPD for calling in death threats to the Islamic Center of Southern California, threats that were all the more serious because in his home he had a large arsenal of firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Mark Feigin is facing charges of criminal threats and committing a hate crime, and his arsenal, combined with his hateful online messages about engaging in a civil war if Hillary Clinton wins next month’s election, suggested to many observers that a potential disaster had been averted.
We told Feigin we found it pretty surprising to learn that his own sister had worked for Donald Trump Jr, but he referred us to his attorney, Daniel Perlman, who has not called us back.
But Katherine Feigin says that although it’s true she did work for the Trumps, she hasn’t spoken to her brother in years, only took a single course of Scientology and has nothing to do with it today, and doesn’t share her brother’s views at all.
Katherine tells us she had grown up in Los Angeles, but moved to New York after law school and was looking for a job when she was recruited to work for Donald Trump Jr.
“I worked for Don Jr in a real estate capacity. I’m not a Republican,” she says. And she, and the rest of her family, are “freaking out” over the problems caused by her brother.
“I stopped talking to him years ago. We have no relationship. Zero. Clearly there’s something wrong with him. I don’t know if he’s been diagnosed. I have no answers for what may be wrong with him,” she says.
We asked her about serving on the executive committee of the Eric Trump Foundation, and she laughed, saying, “Everybody in the company ends up on that board. It was just part of the thing. We got to throw a big party at the end of the year, that was the whole point.”
Katherine and Mark Feigin are the children of Victor and Alice Feigin. Victor is originally from Poland, and he’s a manager in the worldwide oil industry, having worked for major international firms like Bechtel and Russian oil companies. He’s currently working in Los Angeles for Daelim Industrial, a Korean petrochemical firm.
Katherine says that Mark (or Milosz, as he also calls himself), got involved in Scientology in around 2002, and in online messages Mark has defended Scientology and denounced its critics at least through March of this year.
More evidence that Mark currently considers himself a Scientologist came through in a text to us today: “Please don’t contact me you are on sp list,” he wrote, referring to “suppressive persons” or “SPs,” who are considered enemies of the church.
But Katherine says her involvement was extremely short. “Back when I still had a relationship with my brother, in 2002 or 2003, he was getting into Scientology and he kept asking me to try it. I went and did it. But I think the whole thing is crazy,” she says.
She no longer works for the Trump family, and is now working for a Venice, California venture capital firm, Fifth Wall Ventures, that was started by Brendan Wallace and Brad Greiwe in September.
She says her parents also aren’t connected to her brother’s “crazy ideas.”
“This isn’t fun. They’re normal people, they just happen to have a bad seed,” she says.
[Editor’s note: Since this story originally was posted at 5:25 pm Eastern, we’ve added substantially to it after talking to Katherine Feigin.]
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Posted by Tony Ortega on October 26, 2016 at 17:25
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GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice
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