Former president Donald Trump said Friday the prisoner swap between the United States and Russia was a “win” for President Vladimir Putin as he continued to offer baseless speculation over the details of the agreement.
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, two other Americans and a green card holder are back in the United States after being freed by Putin as part of a massive, multi-country East-West prisoner exchange.
Trump — the Republican nominee for November’s US presidential election — set out in an interview with Fox Business why the exchange was bad news for America as he sought to downplay President Joe Biden’s success in securing the deal.
“The Russians made a great deal. I’m not going to criticize it, because it’s good to have them home, but they got a phenomenal deal, and that sets a very bad precedent,” he said, calling it a “win for Putin.”
Gershkovich, former Marine Paul Whelan and Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, along with legal permanent resident Vladimir Kara-Murza, were among 16 prisoners released by Russia.
Elite hitman Vadim Krasikov was among eight Russians released from custody in the West. He had been jailed in Germany over the 2019 assassination of a former Chechen commander near the parliament building in Berlin.
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told journalists at the White House no money or sanctions were used to facilitate the swap.
Nevertheless, Trump said that while it was “wonderful” to have Gershkovich returning home, “these deals are so bad, these deals are going to lead to tremendous kidnappings.”
Trump had repeatedly bragged that only he would be able to secure Gershkovich’s release, and only once he was back in office, using the reporter’s wrongful detention to criticize Biden.
“Are we also paying them cash… Are we releasing murderers, killers, or thugs?” he said on Truth Social, his social media platform, on Thursday.
“Just curious because we never make good deals, at anything, but especially hostage swaps. Our ‘negotiators’ are always an embarrassment to us!” he said.
Trump added that he had secured the release of “many hostages, and gave the opposing country NOTHING.”
Trump presided over the release of hundreds of prisoners in international exchange deals, including an Iranian medical scientist, an Iranian-American doctor, three high-ranking Taliban prisoners and more than 200 Houthi militants who were being held in Oman.
Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, pointed out some of those exchanges on X, calling Trump a “pathological liar.”
Asked by reporters about Trump’s claim that he could have secured the freedom of the prisoners without concessions, Biden said: “Why didn’t he do it when he was president?”
Whelan was arrested in 2018, while Trump was in the Oval Office. The Republican did not mention his name in public during his term.