EXCERPT:
REID: “It really does show you the torment that these people are going through. Think how long Paul Whelan has been there. She went through years. To me, it is sort of shocking to think about spending nearly a year far from home, wondering if you’ll ever get out. Because she was sentenced to nine years, nine and a half years’ incarceration for what, in this country, would amount to nothing, and for something that wasn’t even deliberate. But I think the Putin regime understood that they had not just a black celebrity, a black queer celebrity, somebody who could be used internally as a pawn, somebody who they could sort of internally mock and hold hostage from the United States, knowing the trauma that it would cause back home."