Paul Whelan

On January 3, Whelan's attorney, Vladimir Zherebenko, said he was seeking his release on bail. He said a trial would not begin for at least six months, and that he would welcome an exchange of Whelan for Butina. He said: "I presume that he is innocent because, for now, I haven’t seen any evidence against him that would prove otherwise." More than a fortnight later, Zherebenkov said Whelan had been unaware of the contents of the USB stick and believed it contained material solely of personal value such as "photographs, videos, anything at all, about his previous holiday in Russia."

On December 28, 2018, Whelan was arrested in the Moscow area by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), which later confirmed his arrest. Whelan's twin brother David said Paul Whelan arrived in Moscow on December 22 to attend the wedding of a former fellow Marine at the Hotel Metropol Moscow and to assist the groom's family members on their first visit to Russia, a country Paul Whelan has visited many times. He said his brother planned to return to Michigan on January 6 via Saint Petersburg. David said his brother entered Russia using his U.S. passport. He said his brother had not been in contact with his family. He was formally charged on January 3.

Former CIA agents claim that the CIA would not recruit an agent with Whelan's military record, nor leave an agent exposed without a diplomatic passport. They further claim that Whelan's arrest is connected to tensions between Russia and the United States, including the detention of confessed unregistered foreign agent Maria Butina. On December 20, 2018, when discussing Butina's arrest, Putin stated that Russia "will not arrest innocent people simply to exchange them".

According to a deposition Whelan gave in 2013, he was in law enforcement from 1988 to 2000 as a police officer in Chelsea, Michigan, and a sheriff's deputy in Washtenaw. The Chelsea Police however said he worked in lesser roles and as a part-time officer from 1990 to 1996, while the Washtenaw County sheriff reported no record of his employment. A former colleague said he was a patrol officer from 1998 to 2000 in the Keego Harbor police department.

He said in a deposition in 2013 that he holds a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and an MBA degree. He falsely claimed a BA from the University of Michigan in his profile on Russian social media. He took courses at Northern Michigan University from fall 1988 to fall 1990 without earning a degree.

Whelan traveled to Russia several times from 2006 and maintained an intermittent presence on a Russian language social media website, Vkontakte, where he had approximately 70 contacts. He has studied Russian but communicated online using Google Translate. Whelan supported President Trump and, after Trump's 2016 election victory, Whelan posted in Russian Президент Трyмп Вперед!! (President Trump Onward!!).

He was an IT manager for the Kelly Services staffing company from 2001 to 2003, and then 2008 to 2010. From 2010 to 2016 Whelan was Kelly Services' senior manager of global security and operations.

He enlisted in the Marine Reserves in 1994. He took military leave from Kelly Services to serve with the Marine Corps Reserve in Iraq from 2003 to 2008. He held the rank of staff sergeant with Marine Air Control Group 38 working as an administrative clerk and administrative chief, and he was part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. After a court-martial conviction in January 2008 on multiple counts "related to larceny", He was sentenced to 60 days restriction, reduction to pay grade E-4, and a bad conduct discharge. The specific charges against him included attempting to steal more than $10,000 in 2006 in Iraq and using a false Social Security number to create a false account on a government computer system to grade his own examinations.

Paul Whelan has never married and was raised in the Ann Arbor area of Michigan where he and his twin brother David graduated from Huron High School in 1988. David said the family had not known Paul had a bad conduct discharge. In addition to his twin brother, Paul Whelan has a brother Andrew and a sister Elizabeth.

Paul Nicholas Whelan (born March 5, 1970) is an American resident corporate security director. He received a bad conduct discharge from the Marine Corps. He was reported to have worked as a police officer. He was arrested in Russia on December 28, 2018, and accused of spying, which could result in a 10- to 20-year prison sentence. As of early March 2019 he had not been charged with a crime.