WNBA star Brittney Griner lands in U.S. after prison swap

Anderson Cooper 360

CNN

News

3.7 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2022

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

WNBA star Brittney Griner is back in the U.S. at a Texas Army medical center for routine evaluation after spending almost ten months imprisoned in Russia. Griner was involved in a prison swap for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout. Bill Richardson is a former UN Ambassador and New Mexico governor whose Richardson Center helped secure Griner’s release. He tells Anderson Cooper he commends the Biden administration for getting the basketball star home. Plus, Arizona Sen. Kirsten Simena is leaving the Democratic party and registering as an Independent. CNN Senior Political Commentator David Axelrod joins AC360 to discuss if he thinks this will have any impact on the Democrat’s slim majority in the Senate. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Good evening, Brittany Griner is home and safe tonight and there are new details in
0:04.2	our time in Russian captivity as well as new videos of some of her ordeal.
0:08.1	We begin though with one American who remains in Russia, Paul Wheelan.
0:11.5	And the remarkable details we now have, the scale and the effort to secure his freedom.
0:16.5	Details that might just as easily come straight out of a Cold War spy novel or the Cold War
0:20.1	itself.
0:21.1	We're also learning about the price that Russia was asking for sending Wheelan back, namely
0:25.8	Freedom for Nassassin, a former FSB colonel Vadim Krasikov.
0:29.9	That's the man there.
0:30.9	He's serving a life sentence in Germany for what German authorities say was this state
0:34.8	mandated murder of a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent, execution style in a Berlin
0:39.5	park who was tracked and murdered at close range.
0:43.1	The assassin, Krasikov, was part of the price Russia wanted for the freedom of Paul Wheelan.
0:47.5	He's been as filmatically joins us now with some additional new reporting.
0:50.9	It's a pretty extraordinary story this.
0:52.4	Yeah, there's no question about it.
0:53.9	It's also the first real window we've gotten into what President Biden was talking about
0:57.8	yesterday when he mentioned that the Russians were treating Paul Wheelan differently than
1:02.3	they were when it came to Brittany Griner.
1:04.7	What they meant by that is there was a very clear sense among US officials, beyond just
1:09.3	the general frustration that they had based on how these negotiations were going on, that
1:14.4	the Russians wanted for Paul Wheelan was what they viewed as essentially lateral trade
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from CNN, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of CNN and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.