Before you decide that #PaulWhelan should have been freed before #BrittneyGriner because he was a Marine - at last look at the Navy's court record in this link below
Whelan was *courtmartialed* for attempted larceny, dereliction of duty, among other things.
To be clear, I am all for getting any American, including Whelan, unjustly jailed out of the ПИЗДЕЦ (Google it) terrorist/Fascist state that# Russia has become. We should be celebrating a small victory in getting at least Griner home.
Now let the Biden Administration continue working to get Whelan and others home, because the Trump Administration did nothing when Whelan was jailed in Russia.
https://www.jag.navy.mil/courts/documents/archive/2008/WHELAN,%20P.N.%20200800152%20PCE.pdf
I mean this sincerely, nothing against you, but who are we to judge who should have been released first? None of us average (American) citizens, including the Marine-first folks, is privy to the difficult negotiations between the Biden Administration and terrorist/fascist #Russia and their isolated, misinformed, and paranoid autocrat #Putin. It's clear that both #BrittneyGriner and #PaulWhelan were/are pawns in a difficult confrontation with that war criminal (Putin).
After reading some of the posts from the "Marine-first" camp, my guess is that their comments are a veiled attack against Griner because she's black and lesbian. I strongly doubt they speak for all Marines who serve or have served our country.
I don't go to Truth Social, but at least one political analyst I follow at the bird site, searched Truth Social, and until Griner was released, there was not any prior discussion about Whelan. To be fair, Truth Social wasn't launched until February 21, 2022 - by coincidence, 3 days before Putin started his war in #Ukraine. Whelan has been jailed by Russia since 2018.
Other facts about Whelan that many may not know, per The Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/08/who-is-paul-whelan/
For those who don't subscribe to WaPo and can't get past their pay-to-view block:
1. He's a citizen of 4 countries - US, Canada, Britain, Ireland. IMHO, unusual and certainly uncommon.
2. After being court-martialed by the Marines, he became a corporate security expert, and had been for 10 years before his arrest in Russia,
3. He was in Russia for a wedding, and a flash drive containing "state secrets" was planted on him and then was caught "red handed", according to Russia's defense minister, Sergei Lazarov. Whelan was charged with espionage and in prison since 2018.
4. Whelan is being held in the notoriously harsh, forced-labor camp, 1K-17, 200 miles east of Moscow.
5. Since 2018 and prior to Griner's release, Whelan has described the conditions of 1K-17 in interviews with ABC, CNN.
Fortunately, above all those angry, Marine-first voices is the Whelan family, including his brother, who gave this very thoughtful interview on NBC supporting Griner's release.
@edcasabar why is anybody even talking about this guy?