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The White House said Sunday Paul Whelan was never part of the deal in the prisoner exchange that freed basketball player Brittney Griner for arms dealer Viktor Bout.
White House spokesman John Kirby said Sunday that the deal had always been between swapping Griner and Bout.
“It was never a choice posed by the Russians, ‘Well, hey, you give us Bout back and then you can decide whether you want Brittney or Paul,” Kirby said on Fox News Sunday. “That was never the arrangement.”
“It was only Ms. Griner for Mr. Bout,” Kirby added.
Griner, a WNBA All-Star and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was detained in February after police found vape canisters containing cannabis oil in her luggage at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. She was convicted Aug. 4 following a trial, which legal experts questioned its fairness and sentenced nine years in prison for the canisters.
After facing months of pressure to bring Griner home, Biden announced Thursday that Griner was on a plane back to the United States after a deal was struck with Russia.
“She’s safe. She’s on a plane. She’s on her way home after months of being unjustly detained in Russia held under intolerable circumstances,” Biden said Thursday. “Brittany will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones and she should have been there all along.”
Biden, however, is facing backlash by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers for agreeing with the deal to let Bout be released.
Kirby pushed back against criticism on Sunday, saying the Biden administration made a national security assessment where they believe that “whatever risk there was manageable and okay to make this deal.”
“Nobody over the White House is doing backflips of joy that he is walking the streets,” Kirby said. “But this was the deal we could get. Now is the moment we could get it.”
The Biden administration is also trying to bring home Whelan, after negotiations to bring him and Griner home together failed.
Roger Carstens, special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, said Sunday morning “there’s always cards” in the negotiations for Russia to release Paul Whelan, an ex-marine currently imprisoned in Russia on espionage charges.
