The American Prisoner Caught Between Trump and the Kremlin

Elizabeth Whelan, a soft-spoken portrait artist from Martha’s Vineyard, has never considered herself political. And yet seated before this shrine of sorts—the Trump bobblehead next to the Trump-branded bottle of rosé; the Trump coffee mug; the Make America Great Again hats in red, white, and blue; the Trump tube socks; the SAVE FREEDOM: TRUMP/PENCE bumper sticker—she knows she is in the right place.

She is here, in this office, to talk about her brother, because she is only ever in Washington, D.C., to talk about her brother. On December 28, 2018, Paul Whelan was traveling from his home state of Michigan to Moscow for a friend’s wedding when he was arrested by Russian intelligence officers on charges of espionage. The 49-year-old, formerly a security chief for a manufacturing company, has been in a czarist-era prison in Moscow ever since. According to his family, his health is deteriorating, he has no access to English-speaking legal counsel, and his visits from American embassy officials are limited. And 57-year-old Elizabeth, who before Paul’s arrest spent her days painting and enjoying the Vineyard’s salt-stung air, has been thrust into the miasma of U.S.-Russia relations in a singularly personal way.

Which is how, on a recent Friday, she found herself in the office of David Urban, the Trump campaign official–cum–corporate lobbyist who speaks regularly with the president and counts his fellow West Point graduate Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as a close friend. That Urban, who led the campaign’s successful 2016 operation in Pennsylvania, took the meeting was a victory in itself. For months, Elizabeth has trekked back and forth to plead her brother’s case to the White House, Congress, the State Department—anyone who will listen. She’s made some inroads on Capitol Hill, where last month the House passed a resolution calling on Russia to present “credible evidence” against Paul, or release him from prison. But overall, she’s involved in it,” Elizabeth told me after her meeting with Urban, which I’d sat in on. “I might as well be taking a fainting couch and smelling salts around with me.”