Further Whelan update

So Paul Whelan [...] turns out to be the shittiest version of a Jason Bourne movie ever. It’s being reported he holds 4 passports. Canadian, American, UK, Ireland. Nothing fishy here at all folks. This guy also claimed to be a sheriff’s deputy while only being a part time employee who did stuff like patrolling and crossing guard.
  Daily Kos

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for an explanation for Mr Whelan's detention and said his release would be demanded if his detention is found to be inappropriate.

"We've made clear to the Russians our expectations that we will learn more about the charges, come to understand what it is he's been accused of and if the detention is not appropriate, we will demand his immediate return," he said in Brasilia where he was attending the presidential inauguration.

  RTE

That's pretty tepid, alright. "If the detention is not appropriate."

[Whelan] served in the US Marine Corps Reserves from 10 May 1994 to 2 December 2008 and the highest rank he attained was staff sergeant, according to records provided by the Pentagon.

He was discharged for bad conduct following his conviction by court martial on charges related to larceny, the Pentagon said.

Puts a different spin on the ex-Marine label.

Over the years, Whelan, a Marine Corps veteran, has held himself out to friends and family as a world traveler, accustomed to working closely with FBI agents and American embassy personnel. And he was deeply interested in Russia and its people. He spent considerable time and energy developing a network of contacts there. For the past decade, he has had a profile on the social media platform VKontakte, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, which is unusual for a non-Russian.

[...]

But that doesn’t make Whelan a spy, former intelligence officers said. In fact, his résumé suggests he’s perhaps the last person that the U.S. government would use to collect intelligence, they said.

  WaPo

They would say that.

Whelan was born in Canada and later moved to Michigan, where he embarked on a career in law enforcement in the early 1990s. He appears on some occasions to have exaggerated his credentials as a law enforcement and security expert and, according to former military colleagues, came across as naive.

In a 2013 deposition, stemming from a case in which Whelan wasn’t a party, he said that he had been a sheriff’s deputy in Wash­tenaw County and a police officer for the city of Chelsea.

But a representative for the Washtenaw County sheriff said the agency had no record of Whelan’s employment. And Chelsea police records show that he worked as a part-time police officer, as well as a dispatcher, a crossing guard, and a parking officer, also in a part-time capacity, from 1990 to 1996.

Whelan’s brother, David, said Paul had connections to the sheriff’s office going back to his days as a Police Explorer, a kind of law enforcement version of the Boy Scouts. But he acknowledged that he wasn’t certain Paul was a sheriff’s deputy and said that the two didn’t discuss their work lives.

I wonder why.

Julie LeBourdais, a former colleague in the police department of Keego Harbor, Mich., said Whelan had worked as a patrol officer there from 1998 to about 2000. She remembered him being “straight as an arrow,” and said he seemed to know a lot about world affairs, which she chalked up to his experience in the military, although at that point Whelan had never deployed overseas.

Curiouser and curiouser.

One person who deployed to Iraq with him in 2006 recalled Whelan learning Russian while the unit was there, writing the Cyrillic alphabet out on a board and taking the allotted holiday time to visit Moscow and St. Petersburg.

“I did not remain in touch with him after the deployment, but I do have 15 years of experience doing intelligence,” said T.J. Sjostrom, who served as a noncommissioned intelligence officer in the Marines and was in Whelan’s unit when it deployed to Iraq in 2006. “No intelligence agency would take someone with his record to be a spy.”

Have you met the US intelligence agencies?

In January 2008, Whelan was convicted in a special court-martial for attempted larceny, three specifications of dereliction of duty, making a false official statement, wrongfully using another person’s Social Security number and 10 specifications of making and uttering checks without sufficient funds in his account, according to military court documents.

He was sentenced to 60 days’ restriction — which usually means restriction to a base — and knocked down two pay grades, according to the military court documents. According to his military record, he received a bad-conduct discharge and was separated from the Marine Corps on Dec. 2, 2008.

[...]

His brother said he had no knowledge of the charges.

It seems the only thing his brother knows about him is that he's totally innocent of any Russian charges.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.