Why Griner and not Fogel?

There's been a stink about Biden securing the release of Brittney Griner but not Paul Whelan.  If  you wanted to be sensible,  you'd see that Griner was being held because of an extremely minor drugs issue: carrying less than a gram of cannabis oil, reportedly for medical use. Whelan, on the other hand, is in a Russian prison charged with espionage. 

The closer comparison would be Marc Fogel.

Fogel’s case bears a striking similarity to Griner’s, which has captured national headlines since the WNBA star was detained in Russia in February 2022. Like Griner, Fogel — a 61-year-old history teacher from Pennsylvania who lived in Russia while teaching at the Anglo-American School in Moscow — was taken into custody by Russian authorities in August 2021 after customs officials at a Russian airport discovered around half an ounce of medical marijuana stashed in his luggage. The drugs had been prescribed to him by doctors in the U.S. to help treat chronic pain stemming from a series of injuries and operations, but Fogel’s reasons didn’t matter. Ten months later, in June 2022, a Russian court convicted him of drug trafficking charges and sentenced him to 14 years in prison. In October, Fogel was transferred from a Moscow detention center to one of Russia’s notorious penal colonies, where he is slated to serve the remainder of his sentence.

[...]

Coming in the weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Griner’s arrest sparked an international outcry, with many observers arguing that Griner had been taken as a bargaining chip in Russia’s increasingly tense confrontation with the United States. In May, the State Department determined that Griner was being “wrongfully detained,” a designation that established the legal basis for her release this week in a one-for-one prisoner exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Fogel, by contrast, has garnered little public attention. The State Department has not granted him “wrongfully detained” status, despite repeated appeals from a bipartisan group of lawmakers and Fogel’s lawyers.

[...]

“It’s a bit mysterious to me why we [aren’t] talking about three Americans — now, thankfully, two Americans — instead of just one,” said Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, whose son was a student of Fogel’s at the Anglo-American School.

[...]

On Thursday, Reps. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) and Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) called on the White House to prioritize Fogel for future prisoner exchanges and reiterated prior requests that the State Department reclassify Fogel as wrongfully detained. Fogel’s family, meanwhile, have met with senior officials in the State Department, but they remain largely in the dark about the status of any negotiations for Fogel’s release.

[...]

According to his sister, Fogel and his wife, Jane, had always enjoyed living abroad, and they spent the three decades before Fogel’s arrest traveling around the world, teaching in international schools and raising their two sons, Sam and Ethan. After stints in Colombia, Venezuela, Oman and Malaysia, the Fogels landed in Moscow in 2012, where Marc had secured a position teaching history at the ritzy Anglo-American School, a private school catering to American diplomats and other international political elites.

In late August 2021, the Fogels were returning to Moscow following a visit to their home in Oakmont, Pa., when Marc was stopped by customs officers at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport.

[...]

In Fogel’s bag, the officials found 14 vape cartridges containing hash oil, along with some loose marijuana flower. In total, Fogel’s stash added up to around 17 grams of cannabis — less than an ounce.
  Politico

Surely he knew that any amount is illegal in Russia.

“It makes so little sense when you compare the sentence and the nature of the offense that it can only be explained by politics,” said Tom Firestone, a former legal adviser to the U.S. embassy in Moscow and a member of Fogel’s legal team. “There are cases of leaders of drug trafficking organizations getting shorter sentences than Marc. There are murderers who have gotten 10 years.”

It's fucking Russia, man.

According to McFaul, Fogel’s arrest fits with Russia’s broader practice of detaining American citizens on trumped-up charges, sentencing them to unusually long prison sentences, and then leveraging their freedom to secure the release of high-profile Russian nationals. In April of this year, for instance, the Kremlin secured the release of Russian drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was convicted in 2011 of smuggling over $100 million worth of cocaine into the United States, in exchange for former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, who had been sentenced to nine years in prison in Russia for engaging in a “physical altercation” with a Russian police officer.

[...]

“The Russians have decided that this is the right way to go — arresting somebody like Griner as a way to get [Russian nationals] out,” McFaul said.

As they've done for decades, because it works.

It always surprises me that any American would carry drugs for any reason within Russia.

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

UPDATE: