Trading athlete Brittney Griner for arms dealer Viktor Bout should greatly concern all Americans who care about the security of our country.
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Former President Joe Biden’s last-minute clemency decisions included pardoning his son Hunter, Joe Biden’s siblings and their spouses, and commuting the capital sentences of almost every federal prisoner on death row. They have drawn a boatload of public attention and justified criticism. Indeed, some will likely cost people their lives.
That is clear in the pardon Biden issued to arms trafficker Viktor Bout. Last October, The Wall Street Journal reported that, in August 2024, the Houthis in Yemen sent emissaries to Moscow to purchase $10 million in automatic weapons. There, according to the WSJ’s sources (which included a European security official), the Houthi agents met Viktor Bout, an infamous arms trafficker responsible for perhaps hundreds of thousands of deaths.
