U.S. lawmakers are hailing the return of Josh Holt, who arrived back in the United States over the weekend after being held in a Venezuelan prison for nearly two years without a trial.
Within hours of being freed from a Venezuelan jail, Mr. Holt, a 26-year-old Mormon missionary from Utah, was in the Oval Office shaking hands with President Trump on Saturday.
“Last week, they were saying he was head of the CIA efforts. So, it’s ridiculous. And I’m glad he’s home,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Mr. Holt had been imprisoned by the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro for nearly two years after traveling to Venezuela to marry a woman he met online.
“Welcome you to the White House. It’s really special to have you both,” the president told Mr. Holt and his bride, Thamy Holt, on Saturday. “You’ve gone through a lot. A lot more than people can endure.”
Mr. Holt said that he was “overwhelmed with gratitude.” He thanked those in the room for supporting his wife through a “very, very, very difficult two years.”
He added, “Not really the great vacation I was looking for. But we’re still together.”
He met Thamy online while looking for a Mormon bride who spoke Spanish. A nearly two-year nightmare behind bars ensued.
Also at the homecoming were Mr. Holt’s parents and the three Republican senators who helped secretly negotiate his release, Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Orrin Hatch of Utah, and Rep. Mia Love of Utah.
Mr. Holt’s mother, Laurie Holt, thanked the president, the State Department and the lawmakers.
“I’ve grown to love Sen. Hatch and Mia so much,” she said. “Not everybody gets to talk to Sen. Hatch and Mia Love, and when everything happened last week, Mia was the one that answered her phone and was the one who got things rolling, with Sen. Hatch, to save Josh.”
Ms. Love briefly teared up during the remarks.
Mr. Corker, who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, secured Mr. Holt’s release at a meeting Friday with Mr. Maduro, the culmination of months of back-channel talks led by Mr. Hatch and involving Ms. Love.
The diplomacy succeeded despite tense relations between the U.S. and Venezuela, with the Trump administration slapping increasingly severe sanctions on the socialist regime. The administration has tried to expand the sanctions to the oil industry that is Venezuela’s economic lifeblood after Mr. Maduro went forward with a presidential elections last week that the U.S. has called a “sham.”
Mr. Rubio said Sunday there needs to be “free and fair and internationally supervised elections” in the country.
“Our sanctions are built on that. And when that happens, the sanctions go away. Until that happens, the sanctions remain, and will actually increase,” he said.
As for Mr. Holt’s case, Mr. Corker said the journey back to America was “quite an experience.”
It almost looked like they wouldn’t get out of Venezuela. “We were going down the runway and they turned the engine off and turned around. And we still weren’t sure we were leaving or not,” Mr. Corker said.
Mr. Trump asked what happened and the senator explained that there was an issue with an instrument on the plane.
“Probably the only time anybody was ever happy that there was a bad instrument on an airplane,” Mr. Trump said.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.