BACK HOME FOR GRINER

 

                                              BY BILL JUNEAU

                                                                 Busted in Russia as a "pot head" who hid illegal drugs in her luggage, Brittney Griner is back home in the USA.  The six-foot, nine-inch WNBA super star was released December 8 from a Russian jail  after spending some 294 days there for violating Russia's law against use and possession of happy drugs, many of which are legal in the United States. 

                                           Griner was deplaning in Russia last February 17 with plans to rejoin a team with whom she plays during the WNBA off-season when she was arrested.  A sniffer dog alerted Russian security that illegal drugs were in her suitcase. Search revealed a vape cartridge containing hashish oil. Subsequently, she was tried in a court, found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison.   

                                          There has been both applause and criticism of the Biden deal by which Russia released the 32-year- old basketball star and two-time Olympic gold medal winner, in an exchange deal. For Griner, the USA sent back to the Kremlin, Viktor Bout, a high level criminal and operative for Vladimir Putin, known as the "Merchant of Death." 

                                           GOP leader in the House,  Kevin McCarthy, who will become speaker next month, criticized the exchange as a "gift" to President Putin.  Sen. Rick Scott of Florida characterized the Biden promoted deal as “weak & disgusting” ....and a "bitter pill to swallow." 

                                           Former President Trump weighed in on the exchange: "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,'" Trump posted.  "The Biden deal will forever be known as a stupid and unpatriotic embarrassment for the United States." 

                                         In prison for nearly 20 years, Bout was serving a 25-year sentence for weapon trafficking and conspiratorial activity aimed at murdering Americans. He has been described by Pentagon officials as one of the "most dangerous men on the planet." 

                                          Russia continues to hold inside its grimy  gulags an ex-Marine, Paul Whelan, who has served four years of a 16 year sentence for "espionage."  President Biden has been under enormous pressure from African American women to make a deal which would bring the gay Griner home to her wife, it was reported.

                                         Illegal drug possession in Russia is a crime enumerated in its criminal code.  While Griner's nine year sentence appears to Americans to be excessive, Russians apparently do not think so.  They regard illegal drug use as serious offenses, much in the same way that the United States once dealt with the sale and use of illegal "get happy" drugs.  The allegations of "espionage" lodged and prosecuted against the 52-year-old Whelan, are deemed by Whelan and American officials to be Russian fiction.  "I  have no idea why I am in prison," says Whelan. "I am not a spy and I  committed no crime in Russia where I had gone for a wedding."    

                                        Whelan was arrested in December, 2018, in a Moscow hotel room.  He was employed as corporate security director at Borg Warner, a Michigan automotive parts supplier. 

                                          A spokesman for President Biden has said that America pressed for a deal by which both the towering basketball star and the ex-marine would be repatriated and brought home in exchange for Viktor Bout.  Russian officials said that both could be returned to the USA, but only so long as the USA arranged for the additional release of Col. Vadim Krasikov from a German prison where he is serving a life sentence for murder. Otherwise, only one American prisoner would be released in exchange for Viktor Bout.  

                                          Germany declined to release Col. Krasikov and President Biden said that he  had no authority over the German prisoner.  In the end, the Biden preference for release of the African American Griner, who in the past has upbraided the USA as an uncaring racist nation, overshadowed the concern to bring home the marine veteran falsely accused of being a spy. Whelan, who had served tours in Iraq,  has been behind bars for four years in a Russian prison.    

                                         Griner has complained of the  social injustices and racism in the USA.  At WNBA games, the super star has declined to appear on the court while the national anthem was being played.  In interviews she has said that the anthem has no meaning since it originated at a time when the country was intense in its disdain for people of color.  Griner  takes her cues from the former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick who called for kneeling at the playing of the national anthem as a demonstration of the mistreatment of blacks by racist America.                                           

                                         Stupid deals are not uncommon when orchestrated by Obama and the confused Joe Biden.  In 2014,  President Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden, now President Biden, inked an exchange deal with the bloodthirsty Taliban regime which brought home army deserter Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held by the Taliban for five years following his surrender to it during war with Afghanistan. Former President Trump had called Bergdahl a traitor.

                                        In exchange for Bergdahl, Obama and Biden approved the release of five Islamic terrorists from their cells in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The five notorious killers of Americans promptly returned to the battlefield in Afghanistan.  Following the inept American pullout from that country last year, the five were placed in high positions in the "new" Taliban government.   

     

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