Robert O’Brien, former national security adviser in the Trump administration, says that the Russians were willing to make a deal to release both Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed before Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. The Russians reneged on the deal after Biden was declared the winner of the election, according to O’Brien.

The goal for the Russians was to improve relations between Washington and Moscow after a meeting in October 2020. But, when the election was called for Biden in November, the deal was off. The article in The Hill that reports on O’Brien’s comments does not mention an exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. “Once we lost the election, the Russians lost all interest” in talking with the Trump administration, O’Brien said.

Last week the Biden administration secured a prisoner swap for WNBA Brittney Griner and Bout. There were many critics of the lopsided deal, on both sides of the aisle, though most criticism came from Republicans. Biden insists that Whelan is being treated differently than other prisoners, likely because of the espionage charges against him. Could be. Or it could be that the Russians knew it would be easier to get an international arms dealer in exchange for a basketball player with Biden. They bet right, as it turns out.

Trump weighed in by saying he turned down a deal when he was president for Whelan and he said it included Bout. I don’t doubt his comment. He was very successful in getting Americans held overseas released. He brought home 56 hostages from 24 countries. His record of success was more in four years than the eight years of Obama – Biden. Biden fancies himself some kind of superior negotiator when he has no record to prove that. Secretary of State Blinken isn’t impressive, either.

I hope Team Biden is working as hard to free Whelan as they say they are. I also hope they are working on the other Americans held overseas, though his administration’s record isn’t stellar so far. It’s encouraging that he said the name Marc Fogel last week. I wrote about Fogel last August. He’s been the forgotten man, certainly as long as Brittney Griner was in the news. Suddenly everyone was an WNBA fan. Celebrity wins out over regular Americans.

Fogel is a teacher. He is being held on drug charges. He had medicinal marijuana in his luggage when he was arrested. He’s 61 years old now. It’s reported that it was a small quantity of marijuana, so it’s not like he was trafficking, but that’s what he’s charged with. Trafficking with only a half ounce? He’s been sentenced to 14 years.

Fogel’s case bears a striking similarity to Griner’s, which has captured national headlines since the WNBA star was detained in Russia in February 2022. Like Griner, Fogel — a 61-year-old history teacher from Pennsylvania who lived in Russia while teaching at the Anglo-American School in Moscow — was taken into custody by Russian authorities in August 2021 after customs officials at a Russian airport discovered around half an ounce of medical marijuana stashed in his luggage. The drugs had been prescribed to him by doctors in the U.S. to help treat chronic pain stemming from a series of injuries and operations, but Fogel’s reasons didn’t matter. Ten months later, in June 2022, a Russian court convicted him of drug trafficking charges and sentenced him to 14 years in prison. In October, Fogel was transferred from a Moscow detention center to one of Russia’s notorious penal colonies, where he is slated to serve the remainder of his sentence.

There has been no international outcry against the detention of an American teacher, though, like there was immediately for a professional basketball player. Some of it has to do with racial issues and sexual preferences, too. That’s not just my opinion, people like the CNN show hosts and contributors told us that Griner’s release was most important because she is a black lesbian held in a Russian prison. Her treatment, we were told, would be much more harsh than other prisoners. We don’t know that, though, because she hasn’t spoken about her time in prison yet. I’m sure it was bad, no one would question the brutality shown to prisoners by Russians. It’s being reported that Brittney will make a public statement this week.

Do we think Fogel is being treated well? We’d be naive to think any American in custody was treated well. Some Americans are now speaking out about Fogel and pondering why his release isn’t a top priority, too. His detention is very similar to Brittney’s.

“It’s a bit mysterious to me why we [aren’t] talking about three Americans — now, thankfully, two Americans — instead of just one,” said Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, whose son was a student of Fogel’s at the Anglo-American School.

“He’s not just some random guy that got arrested — he was part of our community,” said McFaul. “He taught our kids, the kids of U.S. government officials and he taught our military’s kids.”

With Griner now released, pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to turn its attention to Fogel. On Thursday, Reps. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) and Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) called on the White House to prioritize Fogel for future prisoner exchanges and reiterated prior requests that the State Department reclassify Fogel as wrongfully detained. Fogel’s family, meanwhile, have met with senior officials in the State Department, but they remain largely in the dark about the status of any negotiations for Fogel’s release.

“We’re not privy to any of that information,” said Anne Fogel, Marc’s sister, in an interview. “They’re telling us that they’re working on it, but we just don’t know.”

It looks like this is the way forward for Putin and Russian officials – arrest Americans on trumped up charges and negotiate prisoner swaps for their release.

According to McFaul, Fogel’s arrest fits with Russia’s broader practice of detaining American citizens on trumped-up charges, sentencing them to unusually long prison sentences, and then leveraging their freedom to secure the release of high-profile Russian nationals. In April of this year, for instance, the Kremlin secured the release of Russian drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was convicted in 2011 of smuggling over $100 million worth of cocaine into the United States, in exchange for former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, who had been sentenced to nine years in prison in Russia for engaging in a “physical altercation” with a Russian police officer.

“The Russians have decided that this is the right way to go — arresting somebody like Griner as a way to get [Russian nationals] out,” McFaul said. “[Bout’s release] will be a huge victory for Putin, because they’ve been talking about getting him out for years.”

Sounds like its time to avoid travel to Russia. There are lots of other places to go.