Heather Cox Richardson

“Well, good morning, folks. And it is a good morning,” President Joe Biden said in remarks today at the White House. “Moments ago, standing together with her wife, Cherelle, in the Oval Office, I spoke with Brittney Griner. She’s safe. She’s on a plane. She’s on her way home.”

A star center for the Phoenix Mercury of the Women’s National Basketball Association, who played in Russia during the off-season, Griner was arrested by Russian officials in an airport near Moscow on February 17, 2022, for drug smuggling after they allegedly found less than a gram of cannabis oil in her luggage. Griner had a prescription for medical marijuana from her doctor, but cannabis is still illegal in Russia. The arrest was just a week before Russia invaded Ukraine, and in the aftermath of that invasion, the administration’s attempts to bring Griner home failed. In August a court sentenced her to 9 years in prison and a fine of a million rubles (about $16,000).

Today the administration exchanged Griner for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout, nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” who was sentenced to 25 years in prison by the U.S. in 2012 after agreeing to provide military weapons to a terrorist organization targeting Americans.

The negotiations have been long and complicated, involving not only federal officials but also former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and negotiators from the Richardson Center for Global Engagement.

While Biden and Cherelle Griner celebrated Griner’s release, they emphasized their ongoing concern for Paul Whelan, detained in Russia since December 2018. Russia accuses Whelan of spying and refused to free him together with Griner. Biden promised the Whelan family the administration would not give up and would keep negotiating for his release.

Whelan’s brother, David, supported the decision to bring Griner home without Whelan. He expressed the family’s disappointment but said: “It is so important to me that it is clear that we do not begrudge Ms. Griner her freedom. As I have often remarked, Brittney’s and Paul’s cases were never really intertwined. It has always been a strong possibility that one might be freed without the other.”

It is worth noting that Russian operatives work to sow division in the U.S., and permitting Biden to win the freedom of a Black married lesbian while keeping a white former Marine in prison is the sort of ploy that could turn the repatriation of an American into a cultural flashpoint. Impressively, both the Griner family and the Whelan family avoided that trap and kept a united front.

Former president Trump, however, played along, complaining bitterly about “a ‘stupid’ and unpatriotic embarrassment for the USA!!!” that had secured the release of “a basketball player who openly hates our Country” instead of “former Marine Paul Whelan,” who “would have been let out for the asking.” Other MAGA Republicans followed suit.

In fact, Whelan was taken during Trump’s administration. John Bolton, who was Trump’s national security advisor when Whelan was arrested, said tonight on the CBS News Streaming Network that “the possibility of a Bout for Whelan trade existed back then, and it wasn’t made, for very good reasons having to deal with Viktor Bout.”

Bolton called today’s exchange “a huge victory for Moscow over Washington” and warned that such a swap would put Americans in danger around the world as bad actors grab them as bargaining chips.

Possibly. But the Russia to which Bout is going back in 2022 is not the same as the Russia of 2019, and the Biden administration’s work to bring Griner home had a domestic effect: it demonstrated that the U.S. government cares about all of its citizens.

The Department of Justice appears to be picking up the pace of its investigations into the events surrounding former president Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, as well as into his theft of documents with classified markings when he left the White House. Both of those investigations are now being directed by special counsel Jack Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland after Trump declared he is running for president in 2024.

Officials in the offices of the secretary of state for Michigan and Arizona have confirmed that they received grand jury subpoenas just days after Smith sent grand jury subpoenas to local officials in Michigan, Arizona, and Wisconsin. The secretary of states’ offices have not offered details about what the subpoenas request.

The documents also remain in the news. After yesterday’s revelation that a team hired by Trump found at least two more documents with classified markings, a Trump spokesperson issued a statement that Trump and his lawyers “continue to be cooperative and transparent, despite the unprecedented, illegal and unwarranted attack against President Trump and his family by the weaponized Department of Justice.”

It felt as if they were trying to get ahead of a story, and it turns out they were.

According to Spencer S. Hsu, Josh Dawsey, Jacqueline Alemany, Devlin Barrett and Rosalind S. Helderman of the Washington Post, lawyers for the Department of Justice have recently asked U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell to hold Trump’s office in contempt of court. He and his lawyers have not complied with a subpoena from May requiring them to return all documents in his possession with classified markings on them (the subpoena specified documents bearing classified markings, as opposed to classified documents, thus avoiding Trump’s insistence that he declassified things without leaving a record).

The reporters have sources who tell them that Trump’s lawyers refuse to sign a document saying all the relevant documents have been returned. The lawyers say that requiring them to make such a claim, under oath, is unreasonable, but it is likely they’re remembering lawyer Christina Bobb, who signed such a document in June 2022 only to discover that it was a lie and that Trump continued to hold documents. The reporters’ sources say lawyers don’t want to sign such a document on Trump’s assurances alone, and the Justice Department wants to be certain there are no more documents bearing classified markings in Trump’s possession.

Los Angeles Times legal correspondent Harry Litman tweeted: “Wow. DOJ wants to hold Trump in contempt for violation of subpoena. A natural outgrowth of the trickling out of documents and failure to comply with subpoena from last May. But quite a strike across the bow.”

According to the Washington Post reporters, Judge Howell will hold a hearing on the matter tomorrow.