During a White House press briefing on Thursday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was asked about the major prisoner swap with Russia.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Yes.
00:01Thanks, Jake.
00:02Whose idea was it to try to go big and bring everyone home at once instead of going for
00:07a simpler one-for-one type deal and walk?
00:12That's a great question, which I don't feel entirely comfortable answering because this
00:17was an organic process involving a lot of people across our government.
00:21But what I will say is this.
00:23The President sat us down on a regular basis over the course of the detentions of Paul,
00:28Evan, and also and really pushed us to think about what configuration would actually work
00:35to make this happen.
00:37And it was through an iterative process of back and forth with various of the allies
00:44I mentioned with engagements with our Russian counterparts where we were making proposals,
00:50getting responses, that this all came together.
00:53And so I would say that if you had not had Joe Biden sitting in the Oval Office, I don't
00:58think this would have happened.
01:00But as I said in my remarks, there were a lot of other people who played a central role
01:03in building out the pieces of this and then executing on that.
01:07The execution phase of this to get this level of coordination together to have those planes
01:13all land on the tarmac at the same time from multiple different countries with so many
01:18different individuals coming from Russia and going back to Russia, really extraordinary.
01:23And I think team effort can be a cliche, but I think in this case it's a warranted description
01:28of what happened.
01:29And was Alexei Navalny supposed to be a part of this deal before he died in prison?
01:34So we had been working with our partners on a deal that would have included Alexei Navalny.
01:45And unfortunately, he died.
01:51In fact, on the very day that he died, I saw Evan's parents, and I told them that the President
01:57was determined to get this done, even in light of that tragic news, and that we were going
02:01to work day and night to get to this day.
02:05And so that work continued over the course of the past few months and culminated in today.
02:09You've mentioned it a little bit, but can you describe and give us a little bit more
02:13color on that Oval Office conversation just before the President came out?
02:16Did all four Americans get to speak?
02:18Did each of the family members get to speak to their loved ones?
02:22Did the President tear up?
02:23Did you tear up?
02:24I saved my tearing up for this podium.
02:27I would like to strike that from the record, if we can use that.
02:30I don't know if that's permitted, probably not.
02:34So the President invited the family members in at the moment that we received the word
02:41from the tarmac in Ankara that the exchange was complete, and he was able to give them
02:46the news directly that the exchange was, in fact, complete.
02:51Then Paul, Evan, and also were in one place.
02:57Vladimir was actually in another place.
02:59So he conducted two calls from the Oval Office, one with the three American citizens on the
03:04phone, and he welcomed their freedom, said that on behalf of the American people he was
03:12so proud to have them out, and then very quickly turned the phone over to their family
03:17members.
03:18And each family got the opportunity to engage by phone with their loved one who was out.
03:24He then conducted a second call with Vladimir, and Vladimir's wife, one of their daughters
03:30and their son were there to be able to speak with him.
03:35And the President and he also got to reminisce on the fact that they were both pallbearers
03:40together at John McCain's funeral.
03:45And so it was a kind of extraordinary personal exchange in the Oval Office, and the family
03:53members were both overwhelmed, of course, by the events of the day and also standing
03:58there in the presence of the U.S. President at the Resolute Desk.
04:02So it was quite a moment.
04:04And can you talk about how the administration tries to make sure this doesn't incentivize
04:11more arrests of innocent Americans, beyond what the President said, advising people not
04:14to go abroad in certain places, especially because you're looking at this inherent imbalance
04:20between releasing or between securing the release of innocent Americans in exchange
04:23for rightfully convicted criminals, including a murderer?
04:27Look, it's a fair question.
04:28It's a question that we grapple with every time that we look at the hard decisions involved
04:33in one of these exchanges.
04:37It is difficult to send back a convicted criminal to secure the release of an innocent American.
04:45And yet, sometimes the choice is between doing that and consigning that person basically
04:51to live out their days in prison in a hostile foreign country or in the hands of a hostile
04:57power.
04:58So from our perspective, we have assessed and analyzed that risk, and we have judged
05:05that the benefit of reuniting Americans, of bringing people home, and also of vindicating
05:10the idea that the American President and the American government are going to do what it
05:15takes to protect and secure the release of innocent Americans, that that benefit outweighs
05:21the risk, and that's how we have proceeded.
05:24I would point out, in addition to that, that in periods of time when the U.S. government
05:30didn't tend to do prisoner exchanges, Americans were unjustly detained and held hostage overseas.
05:37In periods where we did, Americans were unjustly detained and held hostage overseas.
05:42So I think there are real questions, and Roger Carstens, the hostage negotiator at the State
05:47Department, has actually pointed out that in this analysis, it is not quite as clear
05:52cut that the evidence actually demonstrates the kind of result that your question speaks
05:59to, that a lot more people get taken because we do these exchanges.
06:03But it's something that we have to pay attention to, and it's something that makes these decisions
06:07by the President not simple decisions, hard decisions, and yet, as he did today, he was
06:13prepared to make them.