Biden is in a hole of his own making

President Joe Biden’s approval numbers are rising. Democrats are as loyal as they’ve been in months. Inflation is down, jobs are up, and shovels are hitting dirt on ambitious plans to fortify America’s infrastructure.

And, yet, Biden is doing some digging of his own.

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s announcement Thursday that he was appointing a special counsel to investigate how classified documents from Biden’s years as vice president came to be stored in his Delaware residence and private office in D.C. thrust a note of political danger into an otherwise good stretch for the White House.

Biden faces weeks, if not months, of legal probing, speculation and bad headlines over his handling of the material. Not to mention the very strong likelihood of additional House GOP probes into the matter. He also found himself deprived, for the time being, of a clean-shot talking point against his archnemesis former President Donald Trump — who is facing a separate special counsel investigation into his own handling of classified materials kept at his private club and home in Florida.

The two cases are markedly different. But some Democrats privately concede that their coexistence gives the president’s critics a chance to denounce him as negligent, hypocritical or careless right at a time when things were moving Biden’s way.

“I think it takes the whole Trump scandal off the table,” said one Democratic Party operative, granted anonymity to speak freely about the delicate situation unfolding around the president.

“Most polls show that voters don’t give a fuck about this stuff,” they added. “But the media momentum is real.”

Elected Democrats have largely rallied behind the president, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries telling reporters that he has “full faith and credit in President Biden” on the documents matter. Biden, Jeffries told reporters, “is doing everything to take appropriate steps and how to move forward in a responsible fashion.”

But Capitol Hill Democrats have called for briefings and more information surrounding the former vice president’s document storage. And some have started to privately worry that the ordeal will distract from their collective priorities and could begin to help validate GOP investigations they dismiss as politically motivated headaches.

At a minimum, there is a recognition that this would complicate the White House’s public efforts to create a contrast between their professional operations and “the House leadership circus,” as one Democratic official put it.

Another party elder conceded that it was frustrating to hand Republicans “a hammer.” But, like others, the person said it was still too early to conclude that the episode would have a lasting negative political impact.

“Comparing this to what Trump did isn't like comparing apples and oranges, it's like comparing apples and arsenic,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose messy leadership battle has been held up by Biden advisers and Democratic allies as Exhibit A of the GOP’s dysfunction, pledged congressional investigations into the Biden documents.

“Here's an individual that sat on ‘60 Minutes,’ that was so concerned about President Trump's documents locked in behind him,” McCarthy said. “Now we find as the vice president he’s keeping it for years out in the open in different locations. I do not think any American believes that justice should not be equal to all.”

While Democrats have dismissed pledges like McCarthy’s as typical political fare of the opposition party, they also have been frustrated with elements of how the White House has handled the situation. When news broke about the discovery of the first tranche of secret documents at the president’s private office, Biden, one of his lawyers and the White House press secretary reiterated that the president’s lawyers followed a process of informing government records-keepers and cooperating with Justice Department officials.

But nowhere in their remarks or written statement was there an acknowledgment that — as Garland revealed on Thursday — more classified papers had been found at the president’s Delaware home on Dec. 20. Nor have they explained why the discovery of the first tranche was not revealed when it happened on Nov. 2.

Those questions became a flashpoint between the White House and its press corps, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre coming under fire on Thursday for failing to inform the public of the findings.

Earlier in the day, Biden addressed the documents during a speech that had been pegged to improving the economy and lowering the inflation rate. Asked what he was thinking by keeping classified material next to his prized car, Biden noted that “my Corvette is in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street.”

The hope among Biden allies is that, in the long run, the special counsel could be remembered as something of a boon for the president in that it removes the appearance of bias and, conceivably, makes it easier for the separate special counsel in Trump’s own case to move forward. Biden, the thinking goes, has the opportunity to fully clear his name — possibly at some point before he runs for reelection next year.

But in the short term, the politics could be punishing. The coverage puts Biden on Trump's level — removing some of the high ground the president sought when he spoke this past fall about the sanctity of classified documents. Biden’s team, for its part, has declined opportunities to draw the contrast, leaving that to outside allies. But some of their remarks on the subject do so implicitly.

In a statement, a Biden lawyer pledged cooperation with the special counsel.

“As the president said, he takes classified information and materials seriously,” Biden attorney Richard Sauber said, “and as we have said, we have cooperated from the moment we informed the Archives that a small number of documents were found, and we will continue to cooperate.”

Jonathan Lemire and Olivia Beavers contributed to this report.

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Why Japan is the latest ally moving Biden’s way

When President Joe Biden sits down with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday, it will mark a major tete-a-tete that could have profound implications for U.S. policy toward a critical part of the globe.

It’s also an opportunity for Biden to underscore how his diplomatic efforts in the face of new geopolitical threats are bringing allies into closer alignment, and delivering in an area where Donald Trump’s sharp-elbowed approach largely failed to achieve results.

Kishida comes to the White House fresh off of outlining a plan for his country to shed its postwar constraints, both political and psychological, and increase its defense spending and boost military capabilities to not just deter attacks but to strike enemies if necessary. It’s a profound shift for Japan, long averse to militarization and wary of getting dragged into global conflicts.

Kishida’s newly stated goal of increasing Japan’s defense spending to 2.7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product GDP by 2027 comes on the heels of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende address. Days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Scholz declared the war a “turning point,” reason enough, he said, to finally boost Berlin’s defense spending to 2 percent of Germany’s GDP, reversing decades of extreme caution on military matters following the end of the Cold War.

Both announcements are remarkable about-faces for nations with complicated histories. They come just a few years after Trump tried bullying allies into recommitting to their own defense. Many are doing exactly that — but on Biden’s watch.

“What Kishida has announced is just as significant as what Scholz did,” said Ian Bremmer, the president of The Eurasia Group, a global risk assessment firm. While the shift is largely precipitated by the changing security environment, he added, “Biden’s leadership has made it easier for Japan to lean in because they know he’s going to be there. Trump has really receded. I’m just not hearing Japanese leaders worried about Trump’s return as they were.”

Kishida’s trip to Washington is the last stop on a week-long trip to meet with G-7 allies ahead of the May summit he will host in his home city of Hiroshima that will focus, in part, on nuclear disarmament. It also will come as he has been weakened at home by a series of scandals.

“Kishida needs a bear hug from Biden, and Biden can give it to him,” said Joshua Walker, president and CEO of the U.S.-based Japan Society.

With little progress around a broader trans-Pacific trade agreement, the meetings are likely to focus on defense issues and technology, specifically limiting exports of semiconductors to China.

They also could center on Japan’s concerns about regional stability, which have deepened amid North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s recent resumption of a brazen regime of missile tests and China’s recent saber rattling about Taiwan.

“Most of Tokyo's concern focuses on China, but North Korea continues to demonstrate it should not be forgotten,” said Sheila Smith, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The longer-term balance of power across the Indo-Pacific will be determined by how integrated the strategies of Japan, the U.S., Australia and India can be.”

Biden and Kishida agree on that. The White House, in fact, has been heartened by Kishida’s response to the war in Ukraine — which began just months after he was elected — and his willingness to condemn Russia’s invasion and impose strict sanctions alongside the U.S. and European allies. That’s a major reversal from 2014, when Japan sought to avoid taking sides following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. In an interview last week with the Washington Post, Kishida also echoed Biden’s view that Moscow’s unprovoked invasion is about not just the fate of eastern Europe but the rules-based international order itself.

“We see a much greater convergence of how Japan looks at the world and how the U.S. looks at the world,” said one senior administration official, who agreed to discuss the bilateral meetings on the condition of anonymity. Tokyo’s shift to a more forward-leaning posture on defense, the official continued, “reflects the tremendous degree of confidence that comes from U.S. investments in the alliance.”

No press conference has been planned following Friday’s bilateral meeting. Instead, the message likely to be sent by Biden and Kishida will come in the form of a joint communique outlining a series of initiatives in defense, space cooperation and cybersecurity.

“Our friends in China are watching this very carefully,” Walker said. “Whatever joint communique comes out might be stronger than anything we've seen because the Japanese tendency to not name China is fading away under Kishida.”

James Schoff, a former Pentagon senior advisor for East Asia policy and now a senior director of the D.C.-based Sasakawa Peace Foundation, predicted it might look “a bit of a laundry list. But I think it's about the body language and [projecting] the idea that ‘we understand what the challenges are ahead of us and we're in lockstep, arm and arm, working toward dealing with them.”

Many of the “deliverables” that will come out of Friday’s meeting were outlined Wednesday in a joint statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and their Japanese counterparts, Yoshimasa Hayashi and Yasukazu Hamada.

On the defense side, the two countries have agreed to adjust upward the American troop presence on the island of Okinawa, a move to enhance anti-ship capabilities in the event of a Chinese incursion into Taiwan. They also announced plans to add outer space to the scope of the U.S.-Japan security treaty and to begin joint military exercises in 2027.

“My expectation is that it will be a substantial multi hour meeting,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), a former U.S. ambassador to Japan. “My hope is that you will see a very supportive Biden administration come out talking about how we will find ways to increase our [military] interoperability … to improve the efficiency of the military procurement process because we are [Japan’s] largest provider of military weapons platforms.”

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Oops: Mistaken support for Schiff's Intel Committee job

The New Democrat Coalition issued a letter appearing to support Andre Carson as House Intelligence Committee ranking member — an early play for Adam Schiff's job.

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Spy agencies report hundreds more UFO sightings since 2021

National security agencies are studying hundreds of new reports of UFOs, including many that appear to perform maneuvers that are highly advanced, the nation’s top intelligence official reported on Thursday.

In total, 510 “unidentified aerial phenomena” observed in protected airspace or near sensitive facilities have been compiled as of August of last year, according to the report to Congress from the director of national intelligence.

Of those, 366 were gathered since a preliminary assessment was published in 2021 — an increase attributed to a “reduced stigma” around reporting, and a better understanding of the intelligence and safety threats that the phenomena may pose.

More than half of those new sightings — most of which came from Navy and Air Force pilots — exhibit “unremarkable characteristics,” according to the report: 26 were characterized as drones; 163 were labeled balloons or “balloon-like entities”; and six were described as “clutter.”

That still leaves 171 sightings, however, some of which “appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities,” the report says. Few other details were provided about these unidentified entities, though the report noted that no U.S. aircraft has ever collided with a UFO, and observing them has caused no adverse health effects so far.

The 12-page report, which does not detail when each of the sightings occurred, is an unclassified summary of a secret version that was delivered to Congress and was required by last year’s National Defense Authorization Act.

It is the latest installment in a growing campaign by Congress in recent years to force the military and spy agencies to take the sightings more seriously and better coordinate efforts to study them as a potential national security threat. Lawmakers also want agencies to be more forthcoming with information that not been shared with oversight committees.

Other top officials have said in recent weeks that they have not uncovered any evidence so far that the unidentified vehicles are otherworldly in origin or indicate the existence of a non-human entity.

But they insist they are keeping an open mind.

“We have not seen anything that would … lead us to believe that any of the objects that we have seen are of alien origin,” Ronald Moultrie, undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security, told reporters at a briefing ahead of the report’s release. “If we find something like that, we will look at it and analyze it and take the appropriate actions.”

The Pentagon’s recently established All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which was mandated by Congress last year, is serving as the focal point for the governmentwide investigation.

“As a physicist, I have to adhere to the scientific method, and I will follow that data and science wherever it goes,” said Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the AARO.

But officials have also insisted that they are just at the beginning of a full-scale effort — drawing on multiple military and civilian agencies and government contractors — to study UFOs.

The DNI report also follows the passage of the National Defense and Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal 2023, which dedicates 34 pages to aerial phenomena and mandates a series of additional steps for the Defense Department and intelligence agencies.

The latest legislation, which President Joe Biden signed in December, does not refrain from seeking answers to some of the most provocative and hotly debated questions that have swirled around the UFO topic for decades. Those include whether the government or its contractors have been secretly hiding crashed UFOs or whether personnel have suffered health problems after encounters.

It requires the Pentagon and DNI to create a secure system for reporting phenomena without fear of reprisal. That includes calling on people to come forward with any knowledge of retrieved materials from unidentified craft, or any secret efforts to reverse engineer UFO technology.

“We want to make sure service members, and other members of the military, that when they come forward with data and information and videos, that they can accurately give this information without having their careers suffer and being dismissed or disregarded in some way,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), a member of the Armed Services and Intelligence committees who has been a leading sponsor of recent UFO legislation, told “The Brian Lehrer Show” on Dec. 21.

The new defense bill also requires the AARO to deliver, within 18 months, a historical record on government UFO efforts dating to 1945, including "any program or activity that was protected by restricted access that has not been explicitly and clearly reported to Congress."

“That is going to be quite a research project, if you will, into the archives and going backwards in time,” Kirkpatrick said.

Top Pentagon officials also insist they are committed to trying to unearth any buried secrets about UFOs that national security agencies have been accused of shielding even from congressional oversight committees and top officials in the executive branch.

“We are going back and trying to understand all the compartmented programs that this department has had,” Moultrie said.

The newly signed legislation also mandates an intelligence collection and analysis plan to study characteristics, origins and intentions of the vehicles.

Kirkpatrick said the Pentagon office is developing “a focused collection campaign using both traditional and nontraditional sources and sensors.”

That includes building a team of experts from within DoD, at NASA, CIA and other agencies, as well as from the private sector.

“More data will help build a more complete picture and support the resolution of anomalous phenomena,” Kirkpatrick said.

NASA is also stepping up its efforts to assist the overall investigation. The space agency established an independent study team in October, including leading academics, computer scientists, oceanographers, space industry executives and others.

One focus is to determine whether any of its satellites or other space sensors have picked up any UFO activity.

“Our sensor data, looking back at Earth, on this particular satellite, does it have any information that would clarify what that object is as identified by others?” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a recent interview.

The NASA panel is scheduled to issue its own report in July.

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Ro Khanna says he’s looking at the Senate. His allies are talking about the White House.

Rep. Ro Khanna said on Wednesdaythat he's weighing a Senate bid in California.

But recent moves have sparked a new round of speculation among Democrats in several key states that the California congressman continues to have his eye on a higher office.

Khanna has retained consultants who are veterans of New Hampshire’s primary and Nevada’s. He paid one Iowa firm as well, before the Democratic National Committee made plans to revoke the state’s first-in-the-nation status. He’s also begun to more forcefully draw contrasts with potential political rivals, chief among them transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Those close to Khanna say he’s keeping his options open ahead of a potential presidential run in 2028 or beyond. But others in his orbit are talking about an even more compressed timeline: running in 2024 if President Joe Biden decided not to.

"I think he would be a great United States senator,” said Mark Longabaugh, a Democratic strategist whose firm did media consulting for Khanna last year. “But I also think, should Biden decide not to run, I think he's a very plausible candidate for president of the United States. So I think that those decisions are yet to be made."

Khanna, for his part, denied in an interview that he would go for the White House should Biden ultimately forgo a reelection bid, saying “I’ll rule that out definitively.” He has also said he would support Biden if he were to run. More immediately, he has begun talking openly about a possible run for the Senate as his next step, as other California Democrats formally and informally announce their own bids.

“There are a lot of Bernie [Sanders] supporters and progressives who have reached out to me to encourage me to look at the race and what I’ve told them is I will do so over the next few months,” Khanna told POLITICO of a Senate bid.

But despite his protestations otherwise, some consultants whose firmshave worked with the congressman in early primary states say they have a different impression about the extent of his political ambitions.

“I would just have to assume that while Ro has been incredibly interested in the great state of Iowa for a number of reasons, that perhaps it had to do with laying the groundwork for any potential future national bids,” said Stacey Walker, the former Iowa campaign co-chair for Sanders and founder of the Iowa-based firm Sage Strategies, which Khanna paid $8,000 last year. “If President Biden didn't seek reelection, his name would have to be on the list of top contenders. That’s Stacey Walker speaking.”

Just before and during the 2022 campaign cycle, Khanna showered money far afield from his district in Silicon Valley — and even his would-be Senate territory. He paid $22,000 last year to Sanders’ former New Hampshire state director, Shannon Jackson; $25,000 to the Sanders-founded progressive group Our Revolution for digital advertising; and $8,000 each to political firms in Nevada and Iowa. Walker said the payment to the Iowa firm was for help setting up meetings with labor leaders in the state.

Jackson, who is close to Sanders, said he has been working with Khanna to help him build relationships with Sanders activists nationally as well as in states such as New Hampshire. He said Khanna “is not running in 2024,” but “[f]arther down the line, I believe he is one of the progressives who can build on Bernie’s work in the future.”

Khanna, meanwhile, said his payments to the Nevada firm were related to “building support in the Latino community around the country around a new economic patriotism, particularly focused on the Southwest.”

POLITICO has previously reported on Khanna making preparations for a future presidential run. The congressman has said his semi-regular travels to key presidential states help him commandeer a media spotlight on the issues he wants to discuss. But his moves evince the national ambitions of a politician who finds himself at a political crossroads. And what stands out now is that those with ties to him are openly floating the congressman as a potential contender if Biden doesn’t run even as other Democrats with higher ambitions have fallen in line following the midterm elections.

Khanna is seen as one of the leaders of his party’s progressive wing — a relative newcomer on the scene who has broad appeal and formidable skills. At 46, he is comfortable in liberal circles, Silicon Valley boardrooms and even Fox News, where he is ensconced as a regular. He has traveled the country campaigning in blue and red states alike on “economic patriotism.”

Khanna has also shown a willingness to take on members of his own party, including potential Democratic primary rivals. Most notably, as Southwest Airlines’ holiday season meltdown left some 15,000 flights canceled, Khanna dinged Buttigieg, a potential future presidential primary competitor and frequent target of Sanders supporters, tweeting that the Transportation secretary should take a tougher tack with the airlines. “The Department of Transportation's job is not to be buddy-buddy with airlines,” Khanna said.

Dan Kanninen, a Democratic operative and veteran of multiple Democratic presidential campaigns, said Khanna’s criticism of Buttigieg represented a proxy war between two likely future leaders in the party.

“Some folks say ‘well, this is about Iowa, and about Pete winning Iowa,’” Kanninen said. “Maybe there’s some of that. But I don't think it's score-settling. I think it's more forward-looking: ‘He's a rival, and we're trying to hurt a rival.’”

But others in the party said the attacks on the secretary were unfair and unfounded.

“Buttigieg literally was way ahead of the curve on this — months and months and months ahead of the curve, and to most consumers, Pete Buttigieg is a fucking hero,” said John Anzalone, Biden’s longtime pollster.

Khanna denied that his criticism of the Department of Transportation was done with an eye on politics. “I don't think it has anything to do with Buttigieg,” he said. “Whoever the Department of Transportation secretary was, I would have said the same thing.”

Still, Khanna, who is well-connected among the activist left, likely knows tweaking Buttigieg carries with it a certain cachet. Asked about where all this is leading — a 2028 bid and a face-to-face primary debate with Buttigieg, perhaps? — Khanna didn’t close the door to a run at that time.

“We need to have a message of new economic patriotism that brings a production renaissance in America,” he said. “I believe that the message I'm articulating is the message that the Democratic Party should adopt post-President Biden's eight years.”

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‘Lords of war’: DOJ lays out case that Proud Boys leaders led Capitol breach

Leaders of the far-right Proud Boys loyal to then-President Donald Trump mounted a sophisticated effort to stop the transfer of power to then-President-elect Joe Biden that culminated in an organized push to breach the Capitol, prosecutors argued Thursday.

Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio and four allies took cues from Trump’s refusal to cede the election to Biden and inspiration from his debate-stage call for the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough said. He urged jurors to convict the five men of seditious conspiracy — a plot to use force to prevent Biden from taking office.

“These ‘lords of war’ joined together to stop the transfer of presidential power,” McCullough said during opening arguments, citing the Proud Boys’ own description of themselves sent in messages prior to Jan. 6.

The trial is the most significant to emerge from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Though prosecutors had already won a conviction in a separate seditious conspiracy trial against Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys have long been seen as more central to the Capitol attack.

Prosecutors have theorized that the Proud Boys developed a plan to violently stop the transfer of power at any cost, and used tactics they had honed over the years to influence the pro-Trump crowd — “normies,” as the Proud Boys described them — to overtake police at crucial points around the Capitol. They also helped remove some of the barriers that allowed the mob to advance closer to the building.

Members of the group marched on the Capitol well before Trump finished addressing a rally that morning and were present at nearly every significant breach of police lines. Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boy from New York who is on trial alongside Tarrio, was the first to breach the building, when he smashed two Capitol windows with a stolen police riot shield.

Their presence at these breach points was no accident, McCullough contended. The group, under Tarrio’s leadership, had formed a new “fighting force” — dubbed the “Ministry of Self Defense.” That group took additional inspiration from Trump’s Dec. 19, 2020, tweet urging supporters to descend on Washington for a “wild” protest against the election results. Proud Boys, prosecutors said, took that tweet as a call to action.

“These men did not stand back. They did not stand by. They mobilized,” McCullough said.

Defense attorneys will make their presentation to jurors later Thursday afternoon. During pretrial arguments, they’ve contended that prosecutors have overstated the group’s role in the Capitol attack and criminalized their political support for Trump. While members of the group were present at the Capitol, they argued, it wasn’t part of a broader conspiracy to prevent the incoming Biden administration.

Trump will be a looming presence in the background of the trial. The House Jan. 6 select committee’s report underscored his influence on the group, while some of the former president’s closest allies — like longtime confidant Roger Stone — maintained relationships with Tarrio and other key leaders. The panel’s report showed that Tarrio’s codefendants, Ethan Nordean and Joe Biggs, maintained contact with pro-Trump figures like Alex Jones and his InfoWars associate Owen Shroyer in the days leading up to Jan. 6.

Prosecutors portrayed Tarrio as the mastermind of the group, masterful at shielding his men from scrutiny while quietly turning them from a notorious “drinking club” that clashed on the streets with antifa into a more organized and militarized group.

“Enrique Tarrio believed that a Biden presidency was a threat to the Proud Boys’ existence,” McCullough said.

Alongside Tarrio and Pezzola in court were Nordean, of Seattle, Biggs, a Floridian, and Pennsylvania’s Zachary Rehl — three of the Proud Boys prosecutors say led the attack.

Nordean led the group on the ground, prosecutors say, while Tarrio — who wasn’t in Washington because of a court order to stay out of the city — kept in touch from a Baltimore hotel. “President Trump was still speaking at 12:45 when Ethan Nordean mustered the men,” McCullough said, noting that Nordean appeared to have a specific plan in place.

Prosecutors also introduced jurors to North Carolina’s Jeremy Bertino, who has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and is expected to be a crucial witness in the trial. Bertino previously testified to the House Jan. 6 select committee. And they referenced Charles Donohoe, also of North Carolina, who was charged alongside the five men until he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct Congress’s Jan. 6 session. Both men, McCullough said, played key roles instigating the mob attack on the Capitol and directing movements at key breach points.

Prosecutors noted that within minutes of the attack, Tarrio texted allies taking credit for the attack, prosecutors noted. “Make no mistake…” Tarrio wrote, “we did this.”

Others sent similar celebratory remarks. “I’m proud as fuck at what we accomplished yesterday,” Rehl texted associates.

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Navy veteran Taylor Dudley released from Russian detention

A Navy veteran who had been detained in Russia since April was released from detention Thursday following months of on-the-ground talks, negotiators announced.

Members of the Richardson Center for Global Engagement traveled to Moscow and the region multiple times over the past year to negotiate the release of Taylor Dudley, a Michigan native who was detained by Russian authorities after crossing into Kaliningrad from Poland.

He was in Poland attending a music festival at the time. It's not yet clear why he crossed into the Russian exclave.

Dudley is on his way home, the Richardson Center said in a statement.

“The negotiations and work to secure Taylor’s safe return were done discreetly and with engagement on the ground in both Moscow and Kaliningrad,” according to the statement.

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson underscored the significance of the negotiations, the details of which were not disclosed, in the statement, saying Russian authorities had done “the right thing.” Still, he expressed concern for Paul Whelan, the former Marine who has been detained in Russia since 2018.

“As we celebrate Taylor’s safe return, we remain very concerned for Paul Whelan and committed to continue to work on his safe return, as we have been for the last four years, as well as other Americans,” Richardson said.

CNN first reported the news, and added that no one from the U.S. side was sent to Russia in exchange for Dudley’s release.

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