Trump slammed for pretending like he could have freed Paul Whelan

Donald Trump ranted on his social media site on Sunday evening about President Joe Biden getting Brittney Griner released from the Russian prison in exchange for an arms dealer that has been in custody for the past 15 years. He would have been out on good behavior in a few years, MSNBC's Yasmin Vossoughian said in a conversation last week with former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos.

The former president said that he had rejected a deal to free convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for imprisoned American Paul Whelan.

“I turned down a deal with Russia for a one on one swap of the so-called Merchant of Death for Paul Whelan. I wouldn’t have made the deal for a hundred people in exchange for someone that has killed untold numbers of people with his arms deals," he wrote. But he also claimed that he “would have gotten Paul out,” without explaining how.

Whelan has been arrested for what the Russians say is espionage, which he emphatically denies. There's no counterpart of a Russian citizen in the U.S. for similar charges.

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Those involved are now coming forward to call Trump a liar for the claim.

"My brother pleaded for President Trump to tweet about him during President Trump's term in office, and President Trump didn't. And now for him to talk about Paul at all is really offensive," said David Whelan over the weekend on Fox News.

Former U.S. National Security Council specializing in Russian and European affairs, Fiona Hill, told CBS News on Sunday that Trump never really cared about Whelan while in office.

"President Trump wasn't especially interested in engaging in that swap for Paul Whelan. He was not particularly interested in Paul's case in the way that one would have thought he would be," she said.

Meanwhile, the GOP has come out in opposition to the swap of Griner.

"These are very hard decisions for presidents to make. they are put in the position of trading away something of value, not just the particular prisoner they might get back but the American credibility," said New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker during a Monday appearance on MSNBC. "The risk that you are telling people that you can be forced into giving something up. That's a tough tradeoff for President Trump or President Biden. But what you see here is former President Trump having it both ways. He is saying, well, he should have gotten Paul Whelan out for the asking but in fact, he didn't ask President Putin to get him out when he had a chance for two years. That's the issue with President Trump. He likes to pretend other people could do things that he himself didn't or couldn't have done."

In a previous interview with MSNBC, Whelan's brother said that Trump was never interested in helping, but that he's making a lot of headway in conversations with the Biden administration.