Fake Sweden expert on Fox News – has criminal convictions in US, no connection to Swedish security

President Trump's statements about Sweden, based on a report on his favourite TV-channel Fox News, continue to drive the debate about the country in the United States. Sweden is portrayed as a nation plagued by crime and rape, in large part due to immigration.

This Friday the matter was the focus of debate during the conservative Fox-presenter Bill O’Reilly's show, where Nils Bildt confirmed Donald Trump's negative view of Sweden. Nils Bildt was introduced by Fox as a ”Swedish defense and national security advisor”, which has caused more than a few raised eyebrows.

Bildt said that it is impossible to ”have an open and honest debate in Sweden about integration” and that the politicians ”has absolutely no systematic plan for integrating mass amounts of immigrants to become productive members of society”.

– The Swedish political debate is completely false. If you don’t agree with the liberal, common agenda you are viewed as an outsider and not taken seriously, said Bildt also.

And, commenting about crime:

– There is a problem with crime, there is a problem with areas or hotpost of crime, be it in Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm or the suburbs thereof and these things are not openly discussed.

Swedish version: Okänd Bildt på Fox News

Marie Pilsäter at the Swedish Defense Ministry says that no-one called Nils Bildt works there. ”We have no spokesman by that name”, she said. The Foreign Office also denies that he works there. ”We do not know who he is.”

Nils Bildt is the son of Sven Tolling, well know in Swedish equestrian circles. Nils Bildt emigrated from Sweden in 1994. Nine years later he changed his last name from Tolling to Bildt, and he now runs several security companies in the United States. His last known address, according to Swedish registers, is in Tokyo. It is unclear if his companies are still in business.

Nils Bildt, who spoke on Fox News about crime in Sweden, is convicted of a violent offence himself, according to documents from Arlington General District Court in Virginia. Bildt was arrested on the 19th of June, 2014, for assaulting a law enforcement person and for obstruction of justice, after threatening an official [Case number: GC14002638-00].

He was sentenced to one year in prison on the 10th of November the same year. He was also convicted of public inebriation at the same time. Nils Bildt, in an e-mail to DN, says he is ”unaware of the allegations” and therefore cannot comment.

Nils Bildt sent a short e-mail to DN earlier on Friday, explaining why he was given the title of ”Swedish defense and national security advisor”: ”I appeared on Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox News. The title was chosen by Fox News's editor – I had no personal control over what title they chose. I am an independent analyst based in the USA”, he wrote.

In a statement from Fox New to Dagens Nyheter, the producer of the network’s news show The O’Reilly Factor, David Tabacoff, says:

”Our booker made numerous inquiries and spoke to people who recommended Nils Bildt and after pre-interviewing him and reviewing his bio, we agreed that he would make a good guest for the topic that evening.”

Johan Wiktorin, a former defense analyst at the Military Intelligence and Security Service, MUST, says that he has never heard of Nils Bildt. ”He is unknown in Sweden as an expert on national security. The depiction of Sweden as a problem country in American media is a disturbing trend.”

Update: Fox News on how the TV-channel came in contact with Nils Bildt (article in Swedish).

English translation by Amanda Johansson Murie.

Correction: Marie Pilsäter was incorrectly spelled Marie Pisäter in an earlier version of this article.