Griner to Biden: 'Please do all you can to bring us home'

Representatives of Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) star and Houston native Brittney Griner gave the White House a hand-written letter in which she appealed to President Joe Biden to help secure her release from a Russian prison, per an Associated Press (AP) report that was ran by Houston CBS affiliate KHOU.

The AP reported that while most of the correspondence – which was delivered on Monday – is private, Griner's representatives revealed a few excerpts, one of in which she pleaded for Biden not to “forget about me and the other American detainees.”

According to the AP, the 31-year-old Griner wrote that she fears she could spend the rest of her life incarcerated in Russia.

Griner, who went No. 1 in the 2013 draft after leading Baylor to a national championship, was in Russia where she played professionally during the WNBA's offseason to supplement her income.

Authorities at a Moscow airport earlier this year discovered hashish oil in her luggage and subsequently detained her.

Griner wrote the Fourth of July holiday bares a lot of meaning to her family because her father served in Vietnam, per the AP.

“It hurts thinking about how I usually celebrate this day because freedom means something completely different to me this year,” she said in her letter.

The AP reported that Griner's trial had already begun.

According to the report, Griner divulged to Biden that she voted for him in 2020 and expressed her belief in him.

“Please do all you can to bring us home," she wrote. "It kills me to know [my wife, my family and my teammates] are suffering so much right now. I am grateful for whatever you can do at this moment to get me home.”

The AP reported that the two-time gold medal Olympian's supporters have called for a prisoner swap similar to the one that freed former Marine Trevor Reed in late April.