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Joe Biden has faced pressure from within his own administration, as well as his political opponents, in securing the release of basketball player Brittney Griner from Russia, according to reports.
On Thursday, Biden hailed the “intense and painstaking negotiations” that led to the release of Griner in a prisoner swap deal with the arms dealer Viktor Bout. Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport in February for possession of a small amount of cannabis oil, while Bout, nicknamed ‘the merchant of death’, was serving a 25-year sentence in federal prison for fueling conflicts in Africa and the Middle East.
The large discrepancy between these two offenses led the US Department of Justice to believe the prisoner swap was a mistake, according to a report in the . One department official told the Post that “trading a notorious international arms dealer for a basketball player is madness”.
