President Joe BidenJohn’s mind was elsewhere as he watched fireworks explode in the sky above the White House on the Fourth of July.
Two epic sagas were unfolding behind the scenes. Both would come to help define his presidency. A US-mediated international prisoner exchange was coming to fruition and his campaign was falling apart.
Biden, his aides said, appeared that day to be focused on just one of those issues — bringing home three Americans detained in Russia: Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva.
And for those who listened to Biden’s comments on the South Lawn that day, the secret negotiations added extra weight to his traditional endorsement: “We just need to remember who the hell we are,” he said. “We are the United States of America.”
Privately, Biden and his inner circle were nervous, unsure exactly where the next few weeks would lead. They calculated that the way they handled July was crucial for him, politically and personally. And the only thing that could have shown the American public that the president was very committed to governing was something they couldn’t talk about.
“What people didn’t know was what was going on behind the scenes in foreign policy,” said a US official. “And it demanded the president’s attention at all times. He was involved in every discussion.”
The deal to release Americans from Russian custody was in the works long before Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate performance, and U.S. officials have stressed that the president’s calculations about the swap were not affected by his considerations about whether to resign. .
But the two are connected. The timing of the two precarious negotiations means they are paired in the memories of many members of the Biden team, perhaps with at least some sense of “we told you so.”
On July 21, one of the most difficult days of Biden’s presidency, the knowledge that he could finally deliver on a foreign policy promise that had long eluded him offered a single — if oddly timed — bright spot.
“That day, on Sunday, when he announced that he was not going to run — in those same hours, he was dealing with this issue and making calls,” said U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Jeff Flake. “I thought that was extraordinary, something he had been working on, obviously for a long time, having to wrap it up and finish it at the same time as announcing it – that must be bittersweet for him.”
Biden would have to wait more than a week after his announcement to share the news with the world.
This story is based on interviews with 13 officials, staffers and diplomats, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak freely about the inner workings of the Biden White House. They detailed how the White House handled a risky global negotiation while accepting the fact that the man leading the effort would likely have to end his long political career.
Getting to yes
As calls for Biden to abandon his bid for a second term grew louder in the second week of July, the president became even more defiant about staying in the race.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Biden told “Morning Joe” in a July 8 interview.
And he continued to privately express confidence that the prisoner exchange would be carried out.
On July 9, the day after that interview, European officials flocked to Washington for NATO’s annual meeting. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his team took the opportunity to speak with their German counterparts about the proposed swap.
At that time, the Russians had indicated, through intelligence channels with the US, that they were ready to move forward with the prisoner exchange.
“When this happened, everyone was involved,” said a US official.
The deal had been in the works for more than a year. After the release of the WNBA star Brittney GrinerSullivan and Biden devised a plan to recover more American hostages from Russia, including Gershovich and Whelan.
When Russia rejected an initial proposal in January 2023, Sullivan devised a strategy that would appeal to several European countries, most notably Germany. If the US were able to expand the agreement, it could allow more room at the negotiating table.
But the Russians presented another obstacle to Sullivan’s planning: they told the US in March 2023 that they wanted Vadim Krasikov, an FSB colonel who killed a Chechen dissident in 2019, to be released from prison in Germany. Days later, Gershovich was arrested in Russia, on March 29, 2023.
During the rest of that year, Sullivan and CIA Director Bill Burns spoke several times with counterparts in Europe and Russia to try to find a way to bring the deal to fruition. The biggest hurdle for Washington: getting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to agree to release Krasikov. His administration was not receptive to the idea at first, according to another U.S. official.
After much pressure, the Germans gave in. And in early June, the White House made a final effort to get the Russians to agree to a prisoner exchange. The Russians signed the deal in mid-July, the first U.S. official said.
But as the final phase of negotiations unfolded, Biden was trying to fend off a mutiny within his party.
A political crisis unfolds
After his shaky and shaky debate performance in late June, lawmakers on Capitol Hill and others in Washington called on him to step aside. First, it was the Republicans. Then, slowly, came the Democrats, including Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senator Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.).
Biden tried hard. He appeared on stage at a rally in the days following the debate, saying that even though he was older, he was still a strong candidate. Aides rushed to his defense, telling reporters that he was still fit for office — and that he was the one Americans needed to navigate difficult global times.
“On every issue that is of critical importance to the world…foreign leaders have turned to him as they always have. And when I talk to our most important allies and leaders, they have all expressed their confidence in his ability to do the job today,” Amos Hochstein, a senior Biden adviser who works on Middle East issues, told POLITICO last month .
White House officials described mid-July as one of the most intense two weeks of their entire time working in the Biden administration.
They were working behind the scenes on prisoner exchanges, trying to salvage a faltering ceasefire negotiation in the Middle East, dealing with the fallout from the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump and trying to convince America that its leader was still fit to lead.
It was a remarkable turnaround that tested even the most politically battle-worn officials and officials.
By mid-July, the chorus of people calling for Biden to step down had grown.
But as the political crisis consumed his campaign team, Biden’s national security staff was busy trying to finalize the final logistical details of the prisoner exchange.
Biden was facing both of these challenges with the added burden of having to do so from a distance; he tested positive for Covid during a campaign, forcing him into a long period of isolation at the most inopportune time.
Sullivan, who was at the Aspen, Colorado, Security Conference, defended Biden on stage during his panel, saying, “I’m really glad we have that guy sitting at the head of the table in the Situation Room.”
On the sidelines of the conference, he made last-minute calls to European colleagues about the prisoner swap.
There was a chance at that point that the deal with Russia would fall apart.
A legal confusion in Slovakia risked the entire agreement being annulled. The details of this matter are still murky, but it included getting the Slovak courts to allow the release of the Russian prisoner.
On July 21, still recovering from Covid and holed up in his Delaware beach house for the fifth day in a row, Biden called Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob to convince him to act quickly to resolve the issue, so that the Russian imprisoned in the country could be released. along with the rest.
By then, Biden had already decided to end his political career, a reversal he had accepted the night before and carried out that morning. His conversation with Golob would be one of his last, and perhaps most important, calls before going public.
The hostage agreement was final that day, except for a few logistical details. But it was kept secret until the Americans actually went transferred from Russian custody on Thursday.
A victory for Biden’s approach to the world
Officials across the government spent months working to reach the deal in fits and starts — a difficult process that Sullivan attributed to the reality of delicate international discussions rather than the political trials Biden was facing closer to home.
“The coming together of the different elements was a characteristic of the diplomacy and decision-making of each of the countries involved,” Sullivan said on Thursday. “It wasn’t about American politics, the American political calendar, the president’s thinking on other issues.”
Since announcing the deal, White House officials have insisted that the prisoner swap was a deal that only Biden could have achieved.
The deal, they argue, could not have happened without alliances, which Biden valued and Trump questioned.
“This exchange is not by chance. It’s really the result of a lot of leadership from President Biden and the strength of the relationships,” said one of the US officials.
Or, as Fiona Hill, Trump’s former Russia adviser and who has since become a fierce critic, said: “It would be very unlikely that the Germans would do this for Trump.”
At the podium on Thursday, surrounded by families of American prisoners, Biden acknowledged how he trusted his colleagues abroad to help seal the deal that could define the final months of his presidency.
“The agreement that made this possible was a feat of diplomacy and friendship,” Biden said. “I can’t think of anything more important.”
Matt Berg, Miles Herszenhorn and Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.
