{"id":1576698,"date":"2022-07-28T13:04:35","date_gmt":"2022-07-28T17:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1576698"},"modified":"2022-07-28T13:04:39","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T17:04:39","slug":"biden-wants-to-swap-russian-merchant-of-death-for-american-weed-smuggler-and-wrongfully-accused-marine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/biden-wants-to-swap-russian-merchant-of-death-for-american-weed-smuggler-and-wrongfully-accused-marine\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden Wants To Swap Russian \u2018Merchant of Death\u2019 for American Weed Smuggler and Wrongfully Accused Marine"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">32<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fbiden-wants-to-swap-russian-merchant-of-death-for-american-weed-smuggler-and-wrongfully-accused-marine%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1576698&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>The Biden administration has offered to swap a prolific arms dealer who conspired to kill Americans for a WNBA player who smuggled cannabis oil into Russia and a wrongfully accused former Marine, CNN <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2022\/07\/27\/politics\/griner-whelan-biden-offer-viktor-bout-exchange-russia-arms-dealer\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reported<\/a> Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>President Joe Biden supports freeing Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer known as &#8220;the Merchant of Death,&#8221; in exchange for basketball player Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan. Bout <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/08\/17\/magazine\/arms-and-the-man.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sold<\/a> weapons to Marxist insurgents in Angola, allegedly dealt arms during the Yugoslav wars, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/opa\/pr\/international-arms-dealer-viktor-bout-convicted-new-york-terrorism-crimes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">planned<\/a> to sell guns to communist insurgents in Colombia who intended to kill Americans. Bout&#8217;s crimes inspired the 2005 film <em>Lord of War<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Washington Free Beacon<\/em> in an editorial this month <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/national-security\/no-special-treatment-for-brittney-griner\/\">said<\/a>\u00a0the administration should not elevate Griner&#8217;s case above Whelan&#8217;s. Griner, a millionaire athlete and left-wing activist, likely committed the crime of which she&#8217;s accused, while Whelan, who has been locked up since 2019, was likely framed by Russia&#8217;s spy service. Earlier this month, Whelan&#8217;s sister said the Biden administration had not talked to the Whelan family.<\/p>\n<p>Griner made headlines in 2020 when she refused to stand for the national anthem during the entirety of the WNBA season.<\/p>\n<p>The Russian government, which is waging an unprovoked war in Ukraine, has frequently asked the U.S. government to swap Bout in a prisoner exchange, CNN noted.<\/p>\n<p>When asked why,\u00a0CIA director William J. Burns last week said, &#8220;That&#8217;s a good question because Viktor Bout&#8217;s a creep.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Biden&#8217;s support for the prisoner trade conflicts with the Department of Justice&#8217;s position on the issue, CNN reported. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Biden had the final say on the proposal.<\/p>\n<p>Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that &#8220;so far there is no agreement&#8221; on a swap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Biden administration has offered to swap a prolific arms dealer who conspired to kill Americans for a WNBA player who smuggled cannabis oil into Russia and a wrongfully accused<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":894,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1576698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/894"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1576698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1576698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1576698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1576698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}