The Cost of Saudi Involvement in Brittney Griner’s Release

The reaction to Brittney Griner´s release was met with responses ranging from the thoughtless, “Another win for Biden!” to the heartless, “Joe Biden swaps the most dangerous man in the world for woke lesbian pothead #BrittneyGriner.¨

My personal view — one not shared by my AACONS co-bloggers — is a bit more nuanced. I’m personally relieved to see a fellow American, regardless of her politics or her sexual orientation, spared the horrors of a Russian prison, especially for the ¨crime¨ of having less than a gram of legally prescribed hash oil in a vaporizer cartridge in her purse. 

Also, it is true that this was a win for Biden. Griner, unlike say Paul Whelan, the former Marine who has been in a Russian prison for approximately four years now, is an African American woman, and African American women are the single most important voting bloc to the Biden administration. So eager is Biden to appease African American women that he made the woefully unqualified Kamala Harris Vice President, and made Ketanji Brown Jackson a Supreme Court justice after promising his supporters he would nominate a Black woman.

However one wonders at what cost came this Biden victory.

As the NY Post reported:

In a joint statement, the Saudi and UAE ministries of foreign affairs said notorious Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the UAE’s president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, brokered the deal.

The Saudi-Emirati statement said, ´The success of the mediation efforts was a reflection of the mutual and solid friendship between their two countries and the United States of America and the Russian Federation.´

Excuse me for my cynicism but I doubt that the Saudi Crown Prince did anything for the U.S. out of ¨mutual and solid friendship.¨ especially given the obvious dislike between Salman and Biden.

It was not long ago when then-presidential candidate Joe Biden promised, in response to evidence that Salman is responsible for the murder of reporter Jamal Khashoggi, to punish the Saudis: ¨I would make it very clear we were not going to in fact sell more weapons to them. We were going to in fact make them pay the price, and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.” 

Later, after Biden as president sought a secret (and very impeachable) deal with the Saudis to have them ramp up oil production in order to affect lower gas prices until after the 2022 midterm elections, the Saudis embarrassed Biden by both rejecting the deal and making the request public.

Saudi-U.S. relations are so chilled at the moment in fact that some are warning that the Saudis are being pushed into the arms of the Chinese. 

It is also unlikely that the Saudis helped free Griner out of outrage over the injustice of an American being held in a foreign prison for a non-crime since they have also imprisoned an American for actions that can’t be rightly called a crime. As the aforementioned NY Post story states ¨Saudi Arabia in October sentenced US citizen Saad Almadi, 72, to 16 years in prison for tweets mildly critical of the crown prince, according to his family.´

Perhaps Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed ¨The Pariahˆbin Salman just really cares how well Biden polls among Black women then. But assuming that’s not the case, Salman was rewarded in some way for the Saudi role in the Griner release. 

Just days before the release, the Biden Justice Department announced that it had “determined that defendant bin Salman, as the sitting head of a foreign government, enjoys head of state immunity from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts as a result of that office." 

This ruling deserves mention due to its proximity to the Griner matter but is otherwise unextraordinary. Although I can only speculate here, this immunity seems unlikely to be sufficient compensation for the Pariah Prince to help Biden. 

It seems likely a bigger boon has come or will be coming to the Saudis. This may be seen in a reversal of the president’s threat of consequences, most likely in the form of a cut in military aid and weapons sale, following the Saudi rejection of his midterm election ploy. It may be seen in another way. But it seems safe to say that the Saudis did not help Brittney Griner for free and the price to be paid will be paid by the American citizen.

—dk