The Biden administration has freed a notorious Russian arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death” in exchange for WNBA star Brittney Griner.

Griner was sentenced to nine years in Russian prison after being caught in the country with marijuana.

U.S. efforts to have Griner freed have been complicated by the Russian conflict in Ukraine and the United States’ involvement in it.

In what is being called out as potentially the worst trade deal in history, the basketball player was swapped for Viktor Bout, the man who inspired the 2005 crime drama Lord of War starring Nicholas Cage.

“To secure Griner’s release, the president ordered Bout to be freed and returned to Russia. Mr. Biden signed the commutation order cutting short Bout’s 25-year federal prison sentence,” CBS reports.

The U.S. had also hoped to win the release of Paul Whelan, a U.S. Marine veteran from Michigan jailed in Russia since December 2018 on espionage charges that the U.S. government said are baseless, but the Biden administration seemed to prioritize the bigger name by putting a celebrity first.

Speaking from the White House with Griner’s family present, Biden defended his decision to choose Griner as the prisoner that was released simply because she is more famous.

“This was not a choice of which American to bring home,” Biden said while vowing to continue working on freeing detained Whelan.

The Whelan family, meanwhile, issued a statement after learning that the president chose to have the more famous Griner released, noting that they were “devastated.”

“Despite the possibility that there might be an exchange without Paul, our family is still devastated. I can’t even fathom how Paul will feel when he learns. Paul has worked so hard to survive nearly 4 years of this injustice. His hopes had soared with the knowledge that the US government was taking concrete steps for once towards his release. He’d been worrying about where he’d live when he got back to the US. And now what? How do you continue to survive, day after day, when you know that your government has failed twice to free you from a foreign prison? I can’t imagine he retains any hope that a government will negotiate his freedom at this point. It’s clear that the US government has no concessions that the Russian government will take for Paul Whelan. And so Paul will remain a prisoner until that changes.”

The decision to choose the female basketball star over the military veteran is perhaps made even more questionable when considering the fact that Griner has engaged in a number of anti-American protests, such as refusing to stand for the national anthem and in some cases even staying in the locker room during its playing.

It’s also worth noting that it took the U.S. nearly 10 years to apprehend Viktor Bout along with an additional 3 years to convict him for terrorism and arms trafficking.

Thousands of civilians in multiple African countries, were injured and killed by weapons supplied by Bout.