John Kirby: Prisoner Swap Deal ‘Absolutely Couldn’t Have Happened Without the Personal Involvement of the President Himself’

EXCERPT:

KIRBY: “But because it was multilateral, because it involved so many different countries and so many different individuals in the swap, both on their side and our side, it did take a little bit longer to put it all together. But it absolutely couldn’t have happened without the personal involvement of the president himself. I mean, just one hour two Sundays ago, right before he announced that he wasn’t going to seek reelection, he was on the phone with the prime minister of Slovenia, nailing down the last bit of detail that we needed to nail down before we could actually get this deal in place. So, an awful lot of effort right up until the very end.”