Brittney Griner Trade Makes the World a More Dangerous Place
In exchanging an arms dealer for a drug user, the Biden Administration has made the world a more dangerous place
The news out of Washington this morning was absolutely shocking:
WNBA star Brittney Griner has been released from Russian detention, President Joe Biden said Thursday.
Griner was released in a prisoner swap that involved Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. The swap did not include another American that the State Department has declared wrongfully detained, Paul Whelan.
“She’s safe, she’s on a plane, she’s on her way home,” Biden said at the White House Thursday morning alongside Griner’s wife, Cherelle. “After months of being unjustly detained in Russia, held under untolerable circumstances, Brittney will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones, and she should have been there all along.”
There are a lot of things that are absolutely shocking to me.
First and foremost is that Brittney Griner was released but Paul Whelan was not. Whelan has been in prison for years wrongfully accused of being a spy. He has been wrongfully accused for years. But the Biden Administration prioritized a celebrity drug-user like Griner instead.
But releasing Viktor Bout is a damning indictment of the Biden Administration for the same reasons that I wrote back in August when this was first discussed:
But let’s be realistic; trading anybody for Brittney Griner is madness. Brittney Griner is not a national security asset. She may be a political clause by elements of Joe Biden’s base, but there is no national security reason to trade for Brittney Griner.
Now, when you consider what the Biden Administration is proposing to do, it gets even worse. Russia is currently a nation that is unnecessarily and violently invading Ukraine, and likely committing war crimes against the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian people. What do you think they are going to have Viktor Bout do once he returns to Russian soil? The same thing that he’s always done; traffic weapons illegally on behalf of a rogue nation with an imploding economy.
This trade that the Biden Administration proposes puts the entire world at risk at an already perilous time. Is a weed-smoking basketball player worth jeopardizing America’s national security?
This becomes even more of an urgent matter now. With Russia decisively losing the war in the Ukraine and saber-rattling toward the rest of the world, the Biden Administration has now handed over the "Merchant of Death”, a guy convicted of conspiracy to kill U.S. officials and other weapons crimes, a guy who sold weapons to Hezbollah, FARC, Al-Qaeda, Gaddafi-era Libya, and other bad actors. And a guy the Russians can use to traffic weapons for their escapades into Ukraine.
I’m glad Brittney Griner gets to come home. But the cost to world peace and our national security was tremendous.