Brittney Griner Out Of Russian Custody!

Heading home. Brittney Griner will be in the U.S. by Friday.

Keeping it on the hush, hush, President Joe Biden and U.S. officials worked to get WNBA star Brittney Griner released from a work camp in the Russian Federation. 

Biden said that Paul Whalen, an ex-Marine who was held on the charges of espionage is on his list.

Griner's wife finally got relief.  She appeared with the president, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin in the phone call.

The star was sentenced to a work camp after pleading guilty for having canibus oils in her travel packages in February 2021. She got a 10 year bid but it was ended when the U.S. did a prisoner swap with Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer.

In a statement, Russian officials said they exchanged Griner for Bout on Thursday at Abu Dhabi International Airport in the United Arab Emirates. At a news conference on Thursday, Biden confirmed the swap had taken place.

“Brittney will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones,” the president said. “I’m glad to be able to say that Brittney’s in good spirits She’s relieved to finally be heading home.”

The deal reached by officials did not include the release of Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive who has been jailed in Russia on espionage charges since December 2018, according to The Associated Press. Authorities had said for months that they were working to secure the release of both Griner and Whelan.

Biden talks to Griner after she announced her release.

On Thursday, Biden said that officials had not forgotten about Whelan and he promised his administration would continue work to bring him home.

“This was not a choice of which American to bring home,” he said. “Sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia has treated Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s, and while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we are not giving up. We will never give up.”

Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, said she felt “overwhelmed by emotions” on Thursday, chiefly gratitude for the work done to free her wife. While she said the day was “just a happy day for me and my family,” she acknowledged that “there’s so many other families that are not whole.”

“B.G. and I will remain committed to the work of getting every American home, including Paul, whose family is in our hearts today,” she said. “As we celebrate B.G. being home, we do understand that there are still people out there who are enduring what I endured the last nine months of missing tremendously their loved ones.”

Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and Phoenix Mercury center, had been in the custody of Russian officials since February, when authorities said they found less than a gram of cannabis oil in her luggage, according to The Washington Post. She was sentenced to serve 9 1/2 years after a court found her guilty of bringing illegal drugs into the country, The New York Times reported.

Biden working to get Paul Whalen out.

The prisoner swap was the second between the U.S. and Russia to take place under Biden, following the release in April of former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed. Reed had been convicted two years earlier of assaulting two Russian police officers and sentenced to nine years in a prison camp. In exchange for his freedom, officials commuted the sentence of Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who had been convicted in 2011 of conspiring to traffic more than $100 million worth of cocaine, and was sentenced to serve 20 years in prison.