Was it an even swap, getting a professional basketball player home from a Russian prison and in return, releasing a notorious arms dealer from an American prison and sending him home to Russia?
No, not even close. Russia convicted and sentenced American Brittney Griner to nine years behind bars for possessing and smuggling drugs after agents at a Moscow airport found a third of an ounce of cannabis oil in her luggage. She was no danger to anybody.
The U.S. convicted and sentenced Russian Viktor Bout to 25 years for conspiring to kill Americans, acquiring and exporting anti-aircraft missiles, and providing support to terrorists. Arguably, until his arrest, he was one of the most dangerous men on earth.
So the swap was utterly lopsided. And it was the right thing to do.
Unless you’re Donald Trump. Remember, if Joe Biden says day, he’ll say night. So on his oxymoronically-named “Truth Social” website, the ex-president lashed out at Biden for negotiating the trade. “What kind of a deal is it to swap Brittney Griner, a basketball player who openly hates our country for the man known as ‘The Merchant of Death’,” he wrote. Then he asked why American businessman and former Marine Paul Whelan, arrested in Russia in 2018 and imprisoned as a spy for 16 years, wasn’t part of the deal. “What a stupid and unpatriotic embarrassment for the USA!”
It’s no surprise that Trump doesn’t tell the whole truth on “Truth Social.” President Biden had long tried to make Whelan part of the deal. He said so publicly back in July. But the Russians repeatedly rejected the U.S. proposal to release two of their prisoners for one of ours. As an American official says, they called it “a non-starter” and what’s more, said the only release they’d consider was Griner’s.
So what it came down to was, in the words of a senior member of Biden’s team, “a choice between bringing home one particular American, Brittney Griner, or bringing home none.”
Does anyone want to argue that faced with the same choices, Trump or the other Monday Morning quarterbacks who have criticized the swap— Republican Representative Mike Waltz called it “shameful”— wouldn’t have done the same thing? For the record, Trump himself had two years after Paul Whelan was arrested to get him home. As you might have noticed, he failed.
What’s more, Biden’s political enemies might take him to task, but Paul Whelan’s own family doesn’t. His brother David was forgiving: "The Biden Administration made the right decision to bring Ms. Griner home, and to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn't going to happen."
His sister Elizabeth understood Biden’s dilemma too. “We have a country, Russia, who is trying purposely to cause trouble over here, they weren’t going to, in my opinion, send both Paul and Brittney home at same time and give our president the win.” Seeing her brother still locked up in a Russian prison, she admits, is bittersweet, but she said her whole family is on the same page: “We are very pleased to see Brittney come home. Any wrongfully detained American that comes back from overseas is a win for America.”
In case the contrast is lost, the family of the man who’s still locked up calls today’s trade “a win for America,” not “a stupid and unpatriotic embarrassment for the USA!”
It also underscores the difference between Presidents Putin and Biden. As he has made crystal clear during the war in Ukraine, Putin’s regard for human life is low. Biden’s is high, high enough to see human life as an integral part of the nation’s interest. That explains the President’s wording in his clemency order for the arms dealer, who he freed after 15 years served to get an American hostage home: “It has been made to appear that it is in the national interest that the term of imprisonment… not be served in its entirety.”
It borders on tragic that a man as vile as Viktor Bout goes home to Russia. But his freedom bought freedom for an American who, at worst, was guilty of a very small crime, one that wouldn’t even earn a summons here at home.
What’s more, it still doesn’t inescapably mean that Paul Whelan has to serve out his 16 years. Today, President Putin told reporters that when it comes to continuing to negotiate prisoner releases with the United States, “Everything is possible.” There has been speculation that if Germany will work with the U.S., freeing Whelan, who the Russians call a spy, could be part of a deal Putin had sought earlier for the release of a Russian spy who was convicted and imprisoned last year in Germany for murder.
Putin also said that “a certain atmosphere” was created by today’s prisoner swap. “We won’t say no to doing more of this work in the future.”
Neither will President Biden.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Well put! Thank you Greg