Dear Senator Blumenthal,
We have not met. I am Yale College ’89 and lived in Connecticut for four years. I am an Illinois resident, living in Bali. I have taken my son’s case to my own Illinois representatives several times, including visits to their offices; a member of Senator Duckworth’s staff met with me, and I do not know whether the Senator herself has heard my son’s name. I have had no reply from any of them. My friend Paul Aidoo, of Hartford, is bringing this to you as your constituent.
My six-year-old son, Leon, is a U.S. citizen. His mother died suddenly on 5 December 2023 during a short visit to Moscow. On 6 December Russian authorities made her brother his guardian. Nobody told me she was dead; the guardian told me that week that she was in hospital. I learned the truth on 21 December from acquaintances. I have since gone back to Russia six times and filed four cases — the Hague Convention, annulment of the guardianship, a visitation suit, and a complaint now before the Russian Constitutional Court. All denied or pending. The guardian has put an exit ban on my son. This month a Moscow court ordered a daily phone call and one supervised visit a month; the calls go unanswered. I have not seen my son since he was three.
There are other American children in Russia kept from a parent. In those cases there is a custody dispute between a mother and a father. Mine is not that. My son was taken from me the day his mother died, with no notice to me — notice Russian law itself requires — and every court since has upheld it.
The guardian’s messages to me are openly antisemitic. I have kept every one and will show them to your staff. I do not say this for effect; it is part of why a Russian court’s promise of a phone call is not enough.
I am asking for three things. A video call — I am in Asia — with you or your staff; if you would rather meet in person, I will fly to Connecticut or Washington on any date you name. A word from you to the President or to the First Lady’s office asking that Leon be added to the children Mrs. Trump has brought home through her contact with President Putin; no American child has been included yet, and I believe Leon would be the first. It is an American child’s case; it belongs to no party. And, when you next speak of the children Russia has taken, one sentence: that one of them is an American boy taken from his living father.
A letter from your office to the Secretary of State would help as well; people who asked the State Department on my behalf were told it does not handle cases like this, and I filed with the FBI in April 2025. But it is the White House that can bring my son home.
The record is at bringleonhome.org/summary. My Russian counsel are available to your staff. Nothing matters more to me than my child’s return.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Levenstein
Father of Leon Levenstein (b. 27 February 2020, U.S. citizen)
nick@levenstein.net · +1 415 378 1302
Canggu, Bali, Indonesia