Today, Explained - Free Brittney (Griner)

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

A week before Russia invaded Ukraine, it detained WNBA superstar Brittney Griner. Now the United States is turning up the pressure to get her released. ESPN’s T.J. Quinn explains. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Victoria Dominguez, engineered by Efim Shapiro, and edited by Matt Collette and Sean Rameswaram, who also hosted. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

About a week before Russia invaded Ukraine, it detained WNBA superstar Brittany Griner. Authorities say Griner was taken into custody at the Moscow airport in February. Customs agents allegedly found vapes with liquid cannabis or hash oil in her carry-on, which is a legal substance in Russia. But we didn't talk about it on Today Explained because the vibe seemed to be, don't make a big deal about this. Britney's family's trying to resolve it behind the scenes. We don't want some campaign.

But now... A State Department spokesperson saying in a statement, they have now determined that the Russian Federation has wrongfully detained Greiner and that a special presidential envoy for hostage affairs will lead the interagency team for securing her release. The United States is turning up the heat to get Brittany Greiner back. Her story, finally, is ahead on Today Explained. groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Today Explained, I'm Sean Ramos-Furham and this is TJ Quinn.

I'm an investigative reporter for ESirm, and this is TJ Quinn. I'm an investigative reporter for ESPN. But enough about TJ. Let's talk about Brittany. Brittany Griner is one of the greatest players in the history of her game. The X-Factor trying to help him get back into this. Trailing by five, Brittany Griner spinning in the lane. Put it up and in. Count that one and the foul. The deuce and the damage.

Not just her skill and her accomplishments, but her size, her presence. As Griner comes up with the steal and maybe a little showtime. The two-handed finish. She is like nobody who has ever played, and she has dominated every level she's ever been. She's also become kind of a cultural icon as well for her sexuality, for her struggles with mental health issues. She's become someone who really

is more than an athlete to the people who follow her. She's talked about the struggles she had growing up, about standing out the way she did. Always bigger, deeper voice, flat chest, big feet. And I remember, I forgot the girl's name, but she came up to me and she was with her friend. She was like, look, she's not a girl. And she literally grabbed my chest and patted me like that. I was like, look. I was so embarrassed.

I mean, one thing about her is there's never been a room that she's walked into where she was not the absolute center of attention. She's six foot nine. So her whole life has been people staring at her, sort of picking her apart. And she has talked about the anger and frustration that built up and what a release basketball became for her. She was the best high school player in the country. She signed with Baylor, won a national title there, All-American, the number one overall draft pick in the WNBA when she went professional, perennial all-star.

I mean, what stands out is her size, and she plays a sort of physical dominant game, both defensively and offensively, that stand out. But she also, she dunks in games, which is not common in the WNBA. Doug Griner just rolled perfectly. Slam! Doug Brittany Griner. You know, you watch her and it's just a skill in her game that's beyond just the sheer size she has.

So it's fair to say that she's one of the best players in the WNBA. One of the best players in basketball history. What is one of the best players in basketball history doing in Russia? The women who play in the WNBA, which is the highest level of basketball played in that sport, can only make a few hundred thousand dollars at the most. There's a hard salary cap for what they can make. There are limited marketing opportunities for women who play professional basketball. But in Russia, as in a number of countries in Europe and the Middle East, she's able to make more than a million dollars playing for one of the teams there that's owned by oligarchs.

So there's this long history of WNBA players making something that would be a good salary for most people, but really low for someone of their skill, going to Russia, Turkey, where they make much higher salaries. And so she has been spending her off season making three, four, you know, sometimes five times the salary she could make in the U.S. by playing in Russia. I didn't become aware of it until like my junior, senior year in college. And I started to realize that the WNBA doesn't make as much money as people assume or as much as we assume. I didn't know coming in as a rookie, you was only going to make $40,000. By the way, it's not just the money. It's the way they were treated over there.

I mean, they get the full treatment. They get private jets. Every need is attended to. You feel less like an employee and more like a star. And you could see why that would be attractive. So it sounds like there hasn't been any question about safety concerns. I don't recall anybody really raising safety concerns. And I think one reason is when you are going over

there under the protection of an oligarch, it is the equivalent of walking into a neighborhood when the local crime boss says, you know, so-and-so is okay. No one's going to touch you. And that really is how the oligarch system works in Russia. So let's talk about how Brittany Griner ends up being detained in Russia. Where does that story start? That starts February 17th, when she flew over there, as she has many times, and landed at the airport outside of Moscow. You watch in the video that customs officials released and she's just going through the baggage check like normal and then she gets pulled out of the line. What happens after that is in dispute.

Authorities say Greiner was taken into custody at the Moscow airport in February. Customs agents allegedly found vapes with liquid cannabis or hash oil in her carry-on, which is a legal substance in Russia. She actually has not said one way or the other, nor have her representatives. And from that time on, she was in custody, but there was no attention to it in this country. Russia didn't announce it. They kept it very low-profiling. Her representatives were almost immediately in contact with the U.S. State Department. And the advice that the State Department gave them was, look, you need to keep a low profile right now.

There are two directions this can go. Russia has, nominally at least, a criminal justice system. It is, I think, quite demonstrably corrupt and subject to the rule of one man, Vladimir Putin and his government. But there is one and it does operate. And until they have some idea of how she's being treated, it's better for you to keep a low profile because the other path is if she becomes too valuable. If there's a ton of attention to her, well, then she's a potential asset to Putin and his government for something that they want to trade for. And that was not the road you wanted

to be on. They followed the State Department's advice and kept a very low profile until about three weeks later in early March, Russian customs officials did announce it. In this country, we heard about it, I think, first in the New York Times, that she had been detained. And then there was this immediate response over here, wait a second, how can one of the world's best athletes have been in detention for more than two weeks and nobody knew about it? That was intentional. They really wanted to keep a low profile. She's got lawyers over there trying to see, can we work this out through the criminal justice system? And then when you had a number of members of Congress and prominent

athletes, you know, raising the issue of if this were a male athlete, if this was, you know, LeBron James or somebody, people would be going out of their minds. But in this one case, the people who support Brittany Griner lament the inequities in women's sports in this country. But here's where it worked to their advantage, because they felt like, OK, let's just let's keep quiet as long as we can see if we can work this out, because if she becomes essentially a hostage to Putin, then you're in a whole new world. As I recall, because this was happening so close to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it felt like Russia maybe was trying to get a little leverage on the United States, potentially, by detaining this star athlete for having hashish

oil on her. It's entirely possible. And people who follow Russia immediately thought of the fact that there is a well-established history of Russian law enforcement planting drugs on people in order to arrest them. This is what they do. And even though the war hadn't started, the invasion hadn't started yet on February 17th, they knew it was coming. So for those inclined to think this was a setup, the pieces were there. There's Russia's history of doing that, the fact that she's high profile, easily identifiable. The fact that she's also a six foot nine black lesbian, which in Putin's Russia is a warning to all good Russian mothers, look what will happen to your children if you liberalize like the West. They knew that the motivation was there and that

she was potentially a chit to trade for something if they wanted it. But there are also a number of people who said, well, wait a sec, they're not making a big deal out of this. They arrested her. It's entirely possible that she did do it. And just because they're politicizing it or they may be willing to trade for her doesn't mean that necessarily she didn't actually commit the crime she was accused of. Who knows? But what's become clear to the U.S. government at some point is that Russia's open for business and that they don't need to wait a year for her to go to trial. You can hold someone pretrial detention for a year over there. It's time to start moving. So mom's the word when everyone finds out. But now here we are almost 80 days later. Do we know what Britney's experience has been?

Has she been able to speak out about this publicly? She hasn't at all. The only connection to her has been her representatives to her lawyers. U.S. consular officials were able to visit her back in March and reported that she was okay. What I'm hearing from people around her is that she's good considering. I mean, she's in jail in a foreign country. She doesn't speak the language. Supposedly, there are people around her who do speak English. She has reading material. You know, there were reports that it was tough to find a bed to fit her, which would make sense.

She is six foot nine. And that she's doing okay considering. But there's no way to independently verify that. It's tough. BG is us. We are BG. You know, that could have been us. We're really most concerned about her health and safety, especially her mental health. We want her home. Just imagine showing up for the start of a season and the biggest player in the game is not there. You can't just pretend all of a sudden that Babe Ruth or Michael Jordan or somebody just isn't there. And it's been tough for players who wanted to speak out more, but

now they know that they have some freedom to start doing that. I think about her every day, and I can't wait till she gets back here with us. And you saw some incremental increase in how much they were talking about her. At the WNBA draft a few weeks ago. She continues to have our full support. The first statement out of the commissioner's mouth was about Brittany Griner. And certainly we're trying everything we can, every angle, working through with her legal representation, her agent, elected leaders, the administration, just everybody in our ecosystem to try and find ways to get her home safely and quickly as we can.

And just last week, there was a discussion about putting a decal on the floor of games. The WNBA is honoring Greiner with floor decals of her initials, BG, and the number 42 in all of its arenas. And these are all deliberate. It's all strategic to slowly start to ramp up the amount of tension that her case is getting. And the U.S. government's now talking about her, too. Well, that was the big change. The U.S. government will now negotiate more aggressively to win Brittany Griner's release and will not wait for the Russian legal system to play out here.

The people around her were just sort of waiting for permission or a sign that now it's time to really start speaking out. A State Department spokesperson saying in a statement they have now determined that the Russian Federation has wrongfully detained Griner and that a special presidential envoy for hostage affairs will lead the interagency team for securing her release. When you talk about protests, you got to think about, well, who is it that you're actually protesting? Are you trying to create public pressure against Vladimir Putin? Because that's probably not going to work. This is somebody who launched an invasion, united much of the world

against him, has been hit with the biggest sanctions in geopolitical history, and that didn't change him. So it seems unlikely that a hashtag is going to influence what he does. The real pressure that they want to create is with the U.S. government to try to force the White House and the State Department to make her a priority, to cut a deal and get her home. And that's where you see some tension. The families of Brittany Griner and former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, who was there for more than two years and just came home, their families have one goal,

and that's to get the loved ones home. The U.S. government has multiple goals. It's trying to, you know, one, get those Americans back, two, not create a precedent that they fear is going to put more Americans in danger by creating an incentive, and three, serve larger geopolitical interests. So the families, what they want to do is put as much pressure on the U.S. government as they can. And the feeling that if they can put this in the forefront of Joe Biden's mind, you know, it does a lot of good if the president of the United States

or as Ron Klain, his chief of staff, calling over to the State Department saying, what's going on, that that might be the sort of pressure that moves things along. More with TJ Quinn from ESPN in a minute on Today Explained. Thank you. give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M-P.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions apply. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA.

BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Houston rumbling through.

Fires Griner for the dunk. And that's what the sellout crowd is waiting for. Thanks, Blaine. We're back with ESPN investigative journalist T.J. Quinn. And T.J., you've spent the past two months following this Brittany Griner story, but you just mentioned the Trevor Reed story. Former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed is back in Texas tonight after his surprise release from a Russian prison camp, part of a secretive high-level prisoner swap. Tell us why that story is so important to Brittany's story.

Trevor Reed is crucial to her story. He was a former U.S. Marine who had actually worked in President Obama's detail in the White House. His family said that he was over there learning Russian and visiting his girlfriend. And Reed was arrested after a drunken night when officials say that he hit a cop. And Paul Whelan was accused of espionage. Whelan now asking his brother, why was I left behind? Why hasn't more been done to secure my release? Whelan is a corporate security director for a company out of Michigan that does business in Russia. And the U.S. government followed pretty much a similar path of just watching what happened with their cases,

not really reacting. They got through their trial. Independent observers watched this and determined this is ludicrous. These charges are ridiculous. And so at that point, once they were convicted, the U.S. government started saying they're both wrongfully detained. Trevor Reed started to get sick. His parents believe that he contracted tuberculosis over there and it was untreated. He looked horrible. He looked like he could hardly walk.

He looked like he'd been walking shackled. In fact, when we both saw that video this morning, first time we started crying. And you saw a real split in strategy. Paul Whelan's family has been fairly low key about it, but Trevor Reed's parents, both of their own volition and through advice they got, were really pushing hard, saying, we need attention on him. Our son is over there maybe dying in a Russian prison with this terrible care. Finally, just last week, a deal was

cut where he was sent home in exchange for a Russian pilot who had been convicted in this country of trafficking. Pretty much a straight trade. And there was immediate reaction of, why can't you get all of them out? What about Paul Whelan? His family was very upset. And the number of people I've spoken to at the State Department said, look, here's what's different about Trevor Reed's case.

One, his health. There was an emergency. They had to get him out. But they also really kind of flinched at the idea that it was the public campaign of the Reeds that got him out. The people you talk to in states say, hey, look, we've got as much motivation as anybody, maybe not their families, but we have all the motivation we need to get them out of there, just personally, politically, ethically.

The president is focused on that. And we would say to him, we are going to continue to do everything possible to bring you home. And there's frustration from them that there's not more public trust in what they do. And that is the real conundrum for a lot of these families and for the State Department. And I've talked to people around Brittany Griner about this. Essentially, what they're doing is asking an unbelievably skeptical public to accept that institutions are operating the way they should, and the people who run them are acting competently and in good faith. We are just not built to think that anymore, not in this culture in society. So the people around Brittany that I talked to kept saying, look, no, we have faith in the people who are doing this. We think that they're really doing their best. But they also started to get

impatient. And once Trevor Reed came home, that was a big deal to people around Brittany Griner because they recognized, okay, maybe Brittany's case is different, but it means that there is an open channel. You've got two hostile governments that aren't quite at war with each other, but the U.S. is certainly supporting Ukraine. And just the fact that they were able to strike a deal for him gave them a bit of optimism they didn't have before. You know, hearing Trevor Reed's story and hearing that Russia got something out of detaining him, they got a trade with the United States, a one-for-one trade. It does sort of make me think, again, that Brittany Griner could be detained not just because she had some hash oil on her,

if she did, but because she is great leverage for Russia against the United States if they want to trade her for another detained Russian. The reality is it doesn't matter if she did it or not, frankly. If she did, fine. They can still trade for it. If she didn't, well, it doesn't matter in the Russian judicial system because if they say she did, she did. The U.S. government says there's absolutely no proof that Paul Whelan committed espionage over there. But the Russians said he did and they convicted him and they've got him in jail. So what's the

difference? With Brittany Griner, what changed at this point was there was some indication that the U.S. government got that there is a deal to be made. And once that happens, it really doesn't matter, you know, whether she actually did what they accused her of. And even if she did go over there with vape cartridges and violate Russian law, they still want to try to get her out. So it becomes all about a negotiation. And the sign that was really promising to Brittany Griner's supporters was it wasn't just that the U.S. government reclassified her as being wrongfully detained. It's that former U.S. ambassador, Bill Richardson, who has worked for years with his organization privately to negotiate for hostages around the world. They got involved.

I think this is a good sign. The Russians actually made this deal right now. Maybe they're sending a signal. Maybe they're ready to talk. I'm not sure. I don't think so. But I think it's good news for Britney and for Paul Whelan. I'm going to do everything I can to get them out.

They were deeply involved in Trevor Reed's case. They're allowed to do things that the U.S. government is not. The government is restrained by U.S. law about what kind of negotiations they can have, who they can talk to involving third parties in some sort of trade. Bill Richardson, as a private citizen, is not restricted from that. But we still have no idea when she might be released. Absolutely none. Has this shaken the faith of other WNBA players that they can spend the off-season playing in Russia for more money?

Is this basically the end of that phenomena? Well, it seems clear that nobody's going back to Russia. One, just the state of the world. But if somehow there were some resolution and there was something like a normal, stable government over there without Vladimir Putin in power, would it happen? It's really hard to say because you just can't imagine that. All you know is that for the time being, Russia is completely off limits. But there also really needs to be a conversation about who people are getting into business with. The NBA had an owner of a team

that was a Russian oligarch in the English Premier League. There are football teams that, you know, are owned by oligarchs or, you know, oil money from the Middle East. When you go into business with an oligarch, or if you're a player who goes to get a paycheck from an oligarch, these are not plucky business people who started a lemonade stand and built it into something. No, they're part of a criminal enterprise, and that's who you're getting into business with. So beyond Russia, there is a larger question to be had in the sports world about, you know, who are you going to let into the fold. TJ Quinn is an investigative journalist at ESPN.

Hadi Mawagdi produced our show today. Laura Bullard and Tori Dominguez fact-checked it. Afim Shapiro mixed and mastered it. Matthew Collette and I edited it. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. you