Paul Whelan
Paul Whelan was born in 1970 in Canada to British parents of Irish ancestry.
Whelan enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve in 1994, and served on active duty from 2003 to 2008, including a deployment to Iraq where he was a staff sergeant “working as an administrative clerk and administrative chief.” (Read his bio here.)
He was court-martialed in 2008, found guilty, and given a bad conduct discharge. According to Wikipedia (here), the charges against him included “attempted larceny, three specifications of dereliction of duty, making a false official statement, wrongfully using another’s social security number, and ten specifications of making and uttering checks without having sufficient funds in his account for payment.”
Despite that, Biden offered to trade a Russian arms dealer for him, but Moscow refused because he was convicted by a Russia court of spying against their country. An NBC News report that the U.S. was given a choice between Griner or Whelan in exchange for the Russian was inaccurate, and NBC News issued a correction (see story here).
In short, he’s not a “Marine left behind,” he’s a disgraced ex-Marine and convicted thief the Biden administration tried hard to bring home, but couldn’t because the Russians so far aren’t willing to deal; and Whelan’s family repudiates Trump’s attempt to politicize his continued imprisonment in Russia (see story here).