Gershkovich receives 16 year sentence

This is the future Trump wants:

Evan Gershkovich, the first American journalist to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since the Cold War, has been found guilty of spying and sentenced to 16 years in prison by a Russian court, in a case that the US government, his newspaper and supporters have denounced as a sham.

The court in Yekaterinburg announced the guilty verdict and sentencing on Friday shortly after 3 p.m. local time (8 a.m. ET).

The court heard closing arguments and 32-year-old Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, delivered his closing remarks behind closed doors on Friday morning.

The case’s rapid conclusion comes just weeks after Gershkovich first appeared in a glass cage with his head recently shaved at the start of his trial on June 26. On that day, Gershkovich stood cross-armed, occasionally smiling and waving to the crowd of reporters.

The speed of the trial has raised questions over whether the Kremlin is intending to use him as part of a prisoner swap deal with the United States, suggestions which spokesman Dmitry Peskov left without comment when asked about them on a Friday conference call ahead of the verdict announcement.

Trump implicitly telling Putin not to release him unless he becomes president is one of the many things that should be a major scandal should the political press ever remember that there’s more than one candidate in the election.