Iowa judge says he has no idea why he’s banned from entering Russia

CEDAR RAPIDS — One of the 963 Americans, including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, that Russia over the weekend permanently banned from entering the country is a local judge who’s surprised he made the list.

“I wasn’t planning on going there anyway,” Sixth Judicial District Senior Judge Patrick Reilly Grady said dryly Sunday after learning he was number 191 on the banned list. “That’s interesting and weird. I guess I’ll have to update my resume.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Saturday updated a list of Americans banned from entering the country as a response to the United States’ support of Ukraine and the historic sanctions on Moscow nearly three months into its invasion.

The list of 963 people includes a wide variety of Biden’s administration, as well as many Republicans, tech executives, journalists, lawmakers who have died like former U.S. Sen. John McCain, actor Morgan Freeman and other “U.S. citizens,” the Washington Post reported. Some, like Judge Grady, seem to have only tenuous ties — or none at all like Grady — to Russia.

One prominent name missing from the banned list is former President Donald Trump. In fact, the only prominent Trump administration official included in the ban is former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to the Post.

Grady was bemused by the news because he has never traveled to Russia.

He did go in 2012 with Judge Fae Hoover and Gary Hinzman, now a retired corrections official, to Kudowa-Zdroj and Poznan in the southwestern part of Poland to study the courts and penal system.

Grady, who was chief judge of the district at the time, and Hinzman, then director of the 6th Judicial District Correctional Services, were asked to speak at a probation conference in Kudowa-Zdroj. The three then went to Poznan to tour the prisons and courts.

Hinzman said after that trip he had visited Poland several times after developing an exchange program with his counterparts through the American Probation and Parole Association. Polish judges and probation officers also has visited Cedar Rapids in the past.

Grady said Sunday he and his wife, during the Poland trip, first went to Germany to visit friends and then took the train from Berlin into Poland. He said there were never any issues traveling into Central Europe. They spent nearly two weeks in Germany and Poland.

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