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Cherelle Griner, the wife of two-time Olympian star Britney Griner said Friday that President Joe Biden “has not forgotten” the WNBA star following her guilty plea on a drug charge in a Russian court this week.
Cherelle’s comments came in response to a letter Biden sent acknowledging the situation, which she said brought both of them “so much joy.”
“I believe every word that she said to him, he understood and he sees her as a person,” Cherelle Griner said at a press conference in Chicago on Friday afternoon. “And he has not forgotten her, which was her biggest cry in her letter.”
ABC News noted:
Griner, who plays for the Phoenix Mercury, personally reached out to Biden in a handwritten letter that the White House received on Monday, urging the president to help her get out of Russia where she has been detained for more than four and a half months.
“As I sit here in a Russian prison, alone with my thoughts and without the protection of my wife, family, friends, Olympic jersey or any accomplishments, I’m terrified I might be here forever,” Brittney Griner wrote to the president.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote in a tweet Thursday that U.S. officials who attended the second day of Griner’s trial in Russia on Thursday delivered Biden’s letter to the jailed WNBA star.
In 2020 Griner took a stand against playing the National Anthem at WNBA games.
“I honestly feel we should not play the national anthem during our season,” she said, The Arizona Republic reported. “I think we should take that much of a stand.”
“I’m going to protest regardless,” she said. “I’m not going to be out there for the national anthem. If the league continues to want to play it, that’s fine. It will be all season long, I’ll not be out there. I feel like more are going to probably do the same thing. I can only speak for myself.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre addressed the Griner situation on Wednesday.
“Can you preview a little bit of what’s in the President’s letter to Brittney Griner? And does the public support coming out right now help or hurt the ability of the U.S. government to get her out of Russia?” a reporter said.
“Let me just start with the first — the first part of your question, which is — and lay this down a little bit about what happened today,” the press secretary said.
“So President Biden spoke with Brittney — Brittney’s wife, Cherelle, today to make sure she knows we are doing everything we can to get Brittney home as quickly as possible. President Biden shared the letter with her — with her that he is sending back to Brittney after receiving her deeply personal letter on July 4th, which all of you read,” she said.
“And so, this is, again, a top priority for this President. And like I — like I just read, he gets daily updates on what is happening, how we’re going to secure her ho- — her efforts to come home and also Paul Whelan,” she said.
On Thursday, Jean-Pierre said that Biden was “deeply moved” by Brittney Griner’s letter but she would not say what the president wrote in response.
During her Friday presser, Cherelle Griner continued: “I’m grateful and I’m thankful that the administration that was the first one that BG ever voted for, took the time to see her as a person to see her in the midst of what she’s going through and to speak to me directly and let her know that they are exhausting all efforts to bring her home.”
ABC News noted that the WNBA star “was visiting Russia to play basketball in the off-season when she was detained at Sheremetyevo International Airport on Feb. 17 after being accused of having vape cartridges containing hashish oil, which is illegal in the country.”
In pleading guilty this week, she told a Russian court that she packed for the trip in a hurry and did not realize she put the cartridges in her baggage.
