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no bull and the aftermath.

I'm Benjamin Pollard with an episode from the LawFair Archive for July 9th, 2022.

WMBA star, Brittany Griner, who is imprisoned and on trial in Russia on drug charges, sent

President Biden a handwritten letter this week pleading for his help in bringing her back

to the United States.

Russia has hinted at the potential of a prisoner swap between Griner and Victor Booth, a Russian

arms dealer in prison in the United States so that the US can bring the Olympian home.

For today's Archive episode, I picked an episode from January 8th, 2019, in which David

Priests sat down the John Cipher to discuss the history of spy swaps in reference to the

2019 Russian arrest of Paul Whalen, who is imprisoned in a Russian labor camp now.

I'm David Priests and this is the LawFair podcast January 8th, 2019.

The Russian government's recent arrest of American Paul Whalen and its charges against

him have many politicians and pundits speculating about the possibility of an intended spy swap

for Maria Butina.

There's a lot going on here, but there's also a lot of misunderstanding about the history

of spy swaps, what they are and what they aren't.

Earlier this week I sat down with my former CIA colleague John Cipher to talk about it all.

He joined me to discuss the history of spy swaps, the current case involving Paul Whalen,

...