he's been held for 4 years on espionage charges and i can now speak to his brother david whalen. welcome to the day mister whelan. you were hoping that a deal would be made to free your brother as well. now that that has materialized. how are you and your family? well, we've been working on this for 4 years and we are back to work. we had all hopes. i had hopes that paul would be coming home if there was a deal and now that that has fallen apart for paul, we will just go back to supporting him and, and continue to advocate for his release and help us government and acted. how has your brother reacted to the news? well, he's been quoted in media. he was able to make a call that said he was greatly disappointed. and i think you can understand that if you have been charged with a crime that you didn't commit and then convicted of that and then sentenced to 16 years in a russian libra colony. i think few people can think of worse situations to be in. when you come from a line that has freedom and rule of law and things like that. so i think he's, he's pretty shattered. ready his heal

he's been held for 4 years on espionage charges and i can now speak to his brother david whalen. welcome to the day mister wheel and you were hoping that a deal would be made to free your brother as well. now that that has materialized, how are you and your family? well, we've been working on this for 4 years and we are back to work. we had all hopes i had hoped that paul would be coming home if there was a deal and now that that has fallen apart for paul we will just go back to supporting him and, and continue to advocate for his release and help us government and acted how has your brother reacted to the news? well, he's been quoted in media. he was able to make a call that said he was greatly disappointed. and i think you can understand that if you have been charged with a crime that you didn't commit and then convicted of that and then sentenced to 16 years in a russian labor colony. i think few people can think of worse situations to be in. when you come from a line that has freedom and rule of law and things like that. so i think he's, he's pretty shattered. ready his healt

it's notable in this statement by david whalen that he's so glad she's on her way home. as the family member of an american hostage, he fully understands the joy of this and that the biden administration made the right decision in bringing her home. validating the very tough decision that they had to make. and what a senior official just said to me is, we had no choice. the russians at the end of these negotiations where they were trying to figure out a second person because the russians wanted what they called parity, two for two, but they wanted a spy, and the u.s. said we don't have a spy in our custody. and so what they said was, according to the senior official, the choice was one, meaning griner, or none. and they were prepared to cancel griner's release if the u.s. had insists on trying to get paul whelan out. with the prior notifications this time, unlike last spring where there was another false start, with the prior notification to the whelan family this was going to happen. they were again going to be disappointed. david whelan said that made a big difference.

joining me now is david whalan,p paul whalen's brother. and david , i know that you and soy many in america are happy thatth brittney griner is coming home. but of course, your reaction tonight to those words fromords your brother. th it's hard.e you can hear in his voicet hear the despair. i haven't hearmyd my my brothers voice like over a phone call. so it's these snippets come through in the media tha ct are the latest tim e i can hear him. >> and you can hear how disappointed he was atas the news and it's not reallying. surprising. i think we all had heard h secretary blinkeadn back ininke august say or provide the news about the substantial proposal to russia to bring poland to bring brittany home. and i thin k he had been i counting on that. and so to find out that it wastt not going to happen is probably hugely disappointing. >> let's the status ofe the communication you've had with the administratiocon abouty securing your brother's release. i mean, it seemsous re obviousle he's been there a lot longer. and as has mr. fogel,, th the

first to paul whalen's brother, david. good to have you with us. i heard you earlier saying that you're happy for brittney griner and the relief that her family must feel. you want this white house to be more aggressive. how do you want them to go about that exactly, sir? >> well, it's really more assertive. i think the u.s. government is a little bit behind the rogue nations that are taking americans hostage. the biden administration has done a good job in the last two years of trying to get ahead of that curve. we need them to take the next step. when they have someone like paul that is a wrongful detainee, they'll have a plan to get a concession or how to be prepared in order to have those negotiations and bring the person home faster than they're doing with someone like paul who has been there four years. >> martha: so you said they should take more law-breaking kremlin russians in to custody. can you tell us more about what you're requesting there? >> well, there's plenty of them about. we've seen the doj engage in extradition of russians from

whalen is still in a russian prison. the white house says russia was never open to handing over whaling and this particular prisoner swap because of the spy charges that he's facing paul's brother davidpports brittney griner is release once more attempts to get paul out. i think pretty shattered. he was getting his hopes up. i think we all had our hopes up that he would be going home. he'd been planning. you know where he would live. he's lost his apartment in the states in the last four years, and he was thinking about that future and i think not being able to think about that future as concretely is going to be hard democrats say presidents from both parties have head to authorize tough trades over the years involving prisoners. but republicans say handing over the man once called the merchant of death and leaving paul behind was a terrible deal with a possible government shutdown. now just days away, lawmakers on capitol hill maybe making some progress as douglas ader reports , the two sides are still tens of billions of dollars apart. democrats have backed away from a threat to try to force through a spending bill today, but that doesn't mean this won't come right down to the dea