The invitation Cherelle Griner received to the White House on Thursday morning was to meet with national security adviser Jake Sullivan. This wasn’t her first trip to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., but it was the first time officials didn’t work to lower her expectations before she got there.
When she arrived, she was taken to the Oval Office and greeted not by Sullivan, but by his boss, President Joe Biden. The deal is happening, he told her. A minute later he got a phone call and they heard the news together: Brittney Griner was back in U.S. custody.
The call was patched through to Griner, who was standing on a tarmac in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, wearing a knit cap over her recently shorn hair. President Biden spoke first.
“It’s Joe Biden,” he said, according to a White House official. “Welcome — welcome home.”
Cherelle Griner was then led to a private dining room where she could speak with her wife — a free woman for the first time in 294 days — without Russian officials listening in. And sometime in the very…
