The New Yorker:

A political agreement between Republicans and Democrats is at risk of unravelling as some G.O.P. members attack the exchange that freed the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner. 

By Joel Simon

Paula and Joey Reed had no idea what to do when their son Trevor was arrested in Moscow, on August 16, 2019. Trevor, who had been drinking heavily at a party with his girlfriend, said he felt nauseated and asked to step out of the car as he rode home with acquaintances. Trevor was badly intoxicated and began running around a busy street. His acquaintances called the police for help. Officers took him into custody and brought him to a nearby police station. When his girlfriend came back in a few hours to pick him up, Trevor, a twenty-eight-year-old former marine and an eighth-generation Texan, was questioned by officials from the F.S.B., the Russian equivalent of the F.B.I., without a translator or an attorney. She was informed that Trevor was being charged with intentionally endangering the lives and health of police officers, a charge that carries a sentence of up to ten years in prison, for allegedly grabbing the arm of the police officer who was driving and elbowing another. Trevor’s girlfriend called his parents in a panic. She told the Reeds that their son had bruises on his body and may have been badly beaten by the police. The Reeds immediately called the U.S. Embassy. The lackadaisical response of American diplomats intensified their fear. “This was on a Friday, midday, and we asked if they were going to check on him,” Joey Reed recalled. “And they said we’ll check on Monday. That gives you a pretty good sense of our relationship with the United States Embassy for the first year.”

A month later, with Trevor still in a Russian pre-detention center, Joey Reed, a retired fire chief, moved to Moscow to be closer to his son and to monitor the legal proceedings. Paula, a health-care-office manager who left her job to focus on Trevor’s case, stayed in Texas and tried to pressure officials in Washington. Trevor’s lawyers maintained that surveillance video from street cameras never showed the police car dangerously swerving, as officers claimed occurred when Trevor allegedly grabbed the officer, but he was not released on bail, and his case dragged on for months. Joey pushed to get U.S. diplomats to engage in his son’s case, and the embassy sent a Russian-speaking consular officer to attend Trevor’s criminal trial, which concluded in July, 2020, nearly a year after his arrest. In Washington, meanwhile, the Reeds’ calls to White House officials went largely unanswered. Part of the problem, they assessed, was the desire of the Trump Administration to preserve its relationship with Russia. 

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