Kamala Condemns Russia For Griner Sentence, But It Backfires Big Time

Vice President Kamala Harris denounced Russia after a Moscow court sentenced WNBA player Brittney Griner to nine years in a penal colony.

The condemnation backfired unexpectedly for the vice president. She was reminded that as DA and attorney general in California, Harris herself sent to prison thousands with long sentences for the possession of marijuana.

Prisoner Exchange Still No-Go, But Likely in Short Run

Harris’ latest major blunder in public communications came after a Russian court gave Griner almost the maximum sentence of ten years. On February 17, she was nabbed at a Moscow airport with cannabis vaping materials.

Putin’s war on Ukraine, which began a week later, severely debilitated the efforts of the US government to release her. There are indications the Russian regime is using her in order to blackmail America.

Last month, Griner pleaded guilty to the drug smuggling charges with hopes of getting exchanged and sent home.

Putin’s extortion worked. The Biden administration offered Russia to exchange the WNBA player and Paul Whelan, an ex-US Marine jailed on spying charges by Moscow since 2018, for international arms deal and smuggler Viktor Bout, aka the “Merchant of Death.”

The Putin regime, however, appears to have grown impudent beyond imagination. For the time being, it is refusing the exchange and demands another Russian criminal in US custody is added to sweeten the deal.

Bout, a former officer in the Soviet military who went rogue in the 1990s, managed to sell high amounts of deadly Russian weapons to dozens of dictatorships, violent rebels, and other entities around the globe.

While Griner appears disheartened by the long prison term she was given, there have been reports the prisoner swap would take place over the next few weeks.

Kamala Put Away Thousands of Griners in California

Vice President Kamala Harris took to Twitter to express her indignation over Russia’s sentencing. She blasted what she described as Russia’s “wrongful detention” of Griner and called for her immediate release.

However, Biden’s vice president hardly imagined when she decided to speak out, it would backfire because of her own track record as a prosecutor.

Critics of Harris were quick to point out on Twitter that when she served as DA of San Francisco and attorney general of the state of California, she put away thousands of people for marijuana possession.

A report by Mercury News shows as the San Francisco DA, Harris oversaw over 1,900 convictions for marijuana possession. Her office’s prosecutors got people convicted on that count at a higher rate, compared to her predecessor.

A 2019 report by The Washington Free Beacon found during her term as California’s attorney general, between 2011 and 2016, no fewer than 1,560 people got sent to prison on marijuana-related offenses.

Prior to coming out in favor of legalizing cannabis use in 2018, Harris was adamantly opposed. She even actively campaigned against the decriminalization of recreational marijuana.

This article appeared in MorningPress and has been published here with permission.

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