Following the detainment of American Paul Whelan on espionage charges, intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance predicted they "will make his life miserable," until there is a spy swap prisoner release or he signs a confession.
Nance is the author of two books on Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election (2016) and The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West (2018).
He was interviewed on MSNBC's "The Beat" with Ari Melber on Wednewsday.
"There are some people now, like former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, asserting that perhaps this arrest was something else," Melber noted. "Maybe retribution for the U.S. capture of accused Russian agent Maria Butina."
"Hostile government detention is when a foreign government has decided to capture an American citizen and use them for leverage in a geopolitical game," Nance explained. "That's what's going on here."
"I agree with former Ambassador Michael McFaul, this is clearly about getting their subcontractor-spy Maria Butina out of hock," he said.
"What the Russians intend to do, is they going to is break this individual -- they are going to make him sign a confession," he predicted. "The best people in that country will work him over."
"He just doesn't understand that he's a pawn in a game that's been played by countries for years," he concluded.
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