‘WHY WAS 2ND U.S. HOSTAGE LEFT BEHIND?’
Freed American rips prez
Newly freed Trevor Reed emotionally accused President Biden’s administration of unfairly leaving another Marine veteran behind in a Moscow prison rather than getting him out in the same prisoner swap.
“I thought when I found out that it was an exchange that was happening that they had probably exchanged Paul Whelan as well,” Reed, 30, told “Good Morning America” of the fellow veteran who has been held for more than three years in Moscow on trumped-up espionage charges.
“I expected him to be coming home with me. And he — he didn’t,” Reed said in the interview, which aired in full on an ABC News special Monday night.
“I thought that — that that was wrong. That they got me out and not Paul,” he said, twice saying “sorry” as he paused to control his emotions, including “a really strong feeling of guilt. The United States got me out but they left him there. I can’t describe to you how painful that feeling is.”
Biden took personal credit for helping free Reed last month in the exchange for notorious Russian drug trafficker Konstantin Yaroshenko, 52, who was serving 20 years in Connecticut. Whelan, 52, who was left in Russia still serving a 16year sentence, messaged his family at the news, asking “Why was I left behind? . . . Why hasn’t more been done to secure my release?”
Proposes new swap
Reed vowed to now “do everything” he can to “get him out of there.”
That should include a swap for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, whom the Kremlin has floated as a possible exchange for Whelan or Brittney Griner, the US women’s basketball player held in Moscow since February, he told “GMA.”
“Absolutely. Viktor Bout has already been in prison for 15 years,” he said of the so-called “Merchant of Death” who is serving 25 years for selling 100 surface-to-air missiles to a Colombian terrorist group.
“You’re getting two Americans who are going to have, you know, a huge amount of time left on their sentences for a guy who is getting out soon,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s 100 Viktor Bouts. They have to get our guys out.”
Senior Biden administration officials previously stressed that the talks leading to Reed’s release were not the start of a wider diplomatic conversation with the Kremlin.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said only that the US remains “committed to securing the freedom of all US nationals wrongfully detained abroad.”
Reed had been behind bars since 2019, serving a nine-year sentence on charges he assaulted two cops in Moscow, who were driving him to a police station after a party where he reportedly got blackout drunk.
He claimed that after spending a night in the drunk tank, he was initially free to go — until agents from Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, the FSB, came to interrogate him.
“I pretty much knew as soon as I saw FSB agents where this case was headed,” said Reed, who had moved to Moscow to be with his girlfriend, Alina Tsybulnik.