Let's not make a deal
Brittney Griner is a star in the WNBA. The 6-9 center (not a typo) excels for the Phoenix Mercury.
In February of this year, Griner thought it was a good idea to return to Russia to join the basketball team for which she plays during the WNBA offseason. She made this decision even though Russia clearly was on the verge of invading Ukraine. It did so a week later.
Griner was arrested at an airport outside of Moscow after customs officials allegedly found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. She has been detained ever since.
Griner’s trial began last week. Experts say she’s almost certain to be found guilty regardless of the merits. In that event, she could face up to ten years in prison.
Joe Biden is now under strong pressure to obtain Griner’s release. Yesterday, for example, nearly 1,200 prominent black women signed a letter to Biden and Kamala Harris demanding that Biden do so. (To no one’s surprise, Al Sharpton has also gotten into the act. He’s asking Biden to arrange to send him to Russia so he can pray with Griner.)
The letter from the prominent black women followed by one day the delivery of a handwritten letter from Griner to Biden. In her letter, Griner said she is “terrified I might be here forever” and asked the president to do “whatever you can do at this moment to get me home.”
Clearly the letter only made it to Biden because Russian authorities wanted it to. And therein lies the rub.
Russia would love to exchange Griner for one of its prisoners in the U.S. Specifically, according to reports, it wants to swap the basketball star for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer serving a 25-year sentence for conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and providing aid to a terrorist organization.
Biden apparently has resisted this deal so far. He should continue to do so.
It would be a terrible mistake to reward Putin’s unjust snatching of an American by releasing a criminal who conspired to kill Americans and aided terrorists. To do so would only encourage the snatching and sentencing of other innocent or nominally guilty Americans.
That’s the main reason why it’s American policy not to negotiate with terrorists. To be sure, we don’t always adhere to this policy, but this is the general rule, and a good one.
Putin is, essentially, a terrorist. In fact, he has killed many more innocent civilians than ISIS ever did. But regardless of how one characterizes the Russian autocrat, we should not permit Russian would-be murderers to escape punishment whenever Putin decides to arrest an American on trumped up charges.
Viktor Bout deserves to serve his full sentence. Griner doesn’t deserve to serve the sentence she’s likely to get, but she should have known better than to travel to Russia just as it was about to start the deadliest, most unjust European war in 80 years.
Griner’s U.S. coach claims that if the Russians were holding Lebron James, he would be home by now. If it were Lebron, the Russians would probably be driving an even harder bargain which, I hope, Biden would resist. But if the Russians were holding a white American of no particular distinction, Griner’s coach and the 1,200 black female leaders would have nothing to say on the subject.
I’m sorry to report that it’s not just prominent black women who are pressuring Biden to make a deal. Jim Jordan is also doing so, and for less noble reasons. He wants to use Griner’s captivity for partisan purposes.
Everyone knows President Trump would have negotiated Brittney Griner’s release by now.
Actually, no one can know this. It’s true that Trump loves to make deals. However, I hope he would be resisting a Griner-Bout swap at least as steadfastly as Biden has so far.
It’s true that Trump was highly successful in negotiating the release of American hostages around the world. I have no doubt that he’s better than Biden at doing this.
But Griner’s captivity arises in the context of a full-scale war in which the U.S. is strongly backing the captor’s adversary. I’d like to think that Trump would be backing Ukraine at least as strongly as Biden is. If so, there’s little reason to assume that he could secure Griner’s release on better terms than those Putin is offering Biden.
Those terms are bad for America. Thus, as I said, I hope Trump would reject them.
I should also note that the Biden administration hasn’t been entirely ineffective when it comes to the release of American prisoners overseas. In fact, it negotiated the release from a Russian prison of former Marine Trevor Reed through a prisoner swap. Reed had been in jail since 2019 when Trump was president, and was serving a nine-year sentence for an altercation with Russian police officers.
Reed was swapped for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian who had served ten years of his twenty-year sentence for conspiring to import cocaine. His offense was serious, but not nearly as heinous as Bout’s.
Moreover, Reed was suffering from serious health problems, a factor Biden said figured in his willingness to make the swap. Griner may well be depressed, but there’s no indication that she’s in poor health.
If Griner were an ordinary American, Biden might be able to swap her for a run-of-the-mill Russian felon who had already served at least half of his sentence. Eventually, Biden or his successor might be able to do this anyway.
For now, however, Putin’s only offer to Biden appears to be one he should continue to refuse. I’ll be interested to see whether he withstands pressure to take the deal from black feminist minor celebrities — the innermost core of his base.
I think we need to know two things, one of which we'll very likely find out (her sentence), and the other of which we probably won't find out (whether she's guilty of what she's accused of). The reason we won't find out the latter is that the Russians will automatically say yes and Griner will automatically say no. But to my way of thinking, they are the two most important things. If we are to pay a price at all, we should be willing to pay a higher price if she's innocent than if she's guilty. In the latter case, one must wonder whether she made her own bed.