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Family of Marine freed from Russian prison singles out Marjorie Taylor Greene in anger over American ‘apathy’

May 24, 2022 | | Print Article

(Video: CNN)

Trevor Reed, the former U.S. Marine who in 2019 was arrested in Russia and subsequently sentenced to seven years in prison on what U.S. authorities believe were trumped-up charges, is raging mad at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, among others.

In an interview this week with CNN, the former Marine and his family slammed several members of Congress — with Greene being the only one they chose to actually name — for not coming to their aid when they needed them the most.

As previously reported, Reed was finally released from prison last month in a prisoner exchange arranged by the Biden administration.

But prior to his release, Reed’s family had lobbied hard for someone, anyone to do something to get him out. Yet to hear his family tell it, many politicians had responded to their demands with “apathy.”

“To a certain extent, there was a certain apathy that Trevor described in the Russian government with some of our elected officials, because if it’s not about them getting a vote, they’re too busy to deal with it,” Reed’s father said during the CNN interview.

“And this is an American issue, not Trevor, but all the other Americans in the situation. You know, we used to go to war over these things, and now it’s lucky if we get news time about it. And they need to start bringing all of our Americans home that are taken like Trevor was,” he added.

Speaking next, Reed’s sister claimed that there had been “handfuls of people” in Congress who’d chosen to not vote for “bipartisan resolutions” about her brother.

“We had bipartisan resolutions in Congress and Senate and still handfuls of people would not sign them, and they all got very strongly worded e-mails from me, but it’s outrageous to think that there was anybody that we elected or put in these positions that would not be …, ” she said.

To be clear, Congress had been passing “bipartisan resolutions” calling for Reed’s release since 2020. Yet the resolutions seemingly did nothing substantive to actually secure his release.

“Marjorie Taylor Greene is not our representative,” Reed’s father said next.

It’s not clear if he’d meant that literally or figuratively. Literally speaking, no, she’s not their representative. She represents Georgia, but they live in Texas.

“The day before Trevor’s appeal hearing where they were going to give the decision, she called for every resolution and every bill in the House that day to have a roll call vote so they would just put them off. And they didn’t have to do that on Trevor’s,” Reed’s father continued.

“This was a call for Putin to release an American Marine, but she called for a roll call vote. It got put off to the next day where they rolled them all into one roll call vote and her and her cronies in that small group of idiots voted against it. So, you voted for Putin?”

The “small group of idiots” reportedly included Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert:

This is when Reed himself began speaking up.

“I’m going to go to every single one of their campaigns and thank them personally about that. … Thank them for voting against a bill that was only about getting American political prisoners out of Russia. How do you — how do you justify that? That’s embarrassing to me that anyone who represents the United States would vote against something, you know, like that,” he said.

“I’m sure that the Russians loved that. I’m sure that, you know, they’re all big fans of all of those congressmen who did that. That’s completely unacceptable to me. It’s embarrassing. And I better not ever see that happen again to any other Americans because I promise that I will be at every single campaign that that person runs for the rest of their life to tell everyone that they did that.”

As of Tuesday morning, Greene had not yet responded to the Reed family’s accusations. Meanwhile, the interview Monday continued with the family also slamming the U.S. Marines for their alleged lack of effort in securing Reed’s release.

“We heard nothing from the Marine Corps. Not a single representative from the Marine Corps, no Marine Corps groups, VFW, people we reached out to wouldn’t even respond to us. And it just kind of, to me, it just kind of weakened our, you know, our motto of semper fidelis. You know, always faithful,” Reed’s father said.

“Because other than the people that we knew directly that we served with, there wasn’t — I mean, there was a few people that were strangers that were Marines that reached out. But Marines need to think about it this way. There’s millions of former Marines. Think of the voting power that you would have. Think of the voice you would have. And you can’t use any of that for another Marine? Semper fidelis.”

Vivek Saxena
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