U.S. President Donald Trump reacts, as he attends a ceremony at his Mar-a-Lago estate (REUTERS)
The Times UK reports Colorado pig farmer John Long was at home when he got the message that Marian Morgan, a scammer who robbed $20 million from him and thousands of other investors through a Ponzi scheme, was being released from prison less than halfway through her 33-year sentence.
“It was not for good behavior or because she had paid her victims back,” reports the Times. “Morgan was being released because President Trump had commuted her sentence.”
This, reports the Ties, also released the convicted scammer from the restitution payments she owed her victims.
Long, an 80-year-old Trump voter, called the newly freed Morgan “criminally insane,” and warned she’s only “going to suck money out of somebody” else.
The victim, like others, was contacted by Morgan and her co-conspirators in 2006, who purported to be an exclusive group of financial advisers with an opportunity to invest money in Europe with huge returns within months at low risk.
“Long and his son invested about half a million dollars. But time passed, and the money did not come back,” reports the Times. “When Long emailed Morgan asking where it was, she would send him ‘curt’ emails brushing off his inquiries, telling him that she was in Europe on business. But her IP address showed that she was in Florida, where she lived in a waterfront mansion with her husband, who was later sentenced to ten years in prison for conspiracy and money-laundering.”
She added at the tine that if he and her other victims approached authorities, they would never see their money again.
Nevertheless, Long went to the FBI and testified at her trial. She was convicted in 2011. All that hard work means little, now, however — thanks to the president for whom he voted.
“We had justice and now it’s kind of like … ‘we’re going to let these criminals go out and do it again’,” Long told the Times.
“Lawyers working on pardon cases say a ‘cottage industry’ has sprung up under Trump where attorneys and lobbyists who are close to the White House claim they can use their access to the president to secure pardons — for a price,” the Times reports. “Public records show the president has pardoned criminals after lobbying from allies.
Pardons in the second Trump administration are more blatantly a bought and sold commodity, said Liz Oyer, the former head pardon attorney who was fired a few weeks after Trump returned to the White House. What was once a process involving petitions to the Department of Justice is now done directly through the White House.
“It’s not normal,” said Oyer. “The traditional criteria that the [DOJ] applies for recommending clemency have been largely abandoned by this administration, and the rigorous vetting process, which often involves investigations conducted by the FBI, has been abandoned.”
Judith Ausmus is another Trump voter who with her husband, Donald, owned a small vending machine company in Minnesota when they got snagged by Morgan. They borrowed $100,000 from Ausmus’s brother, who also invested in the scheme. Both were “financially devastated” when Morgan was discovered to be a criminal. The Times reports they lost their company, and had to remortgage their house.
“It was tremendously hard times, all the way around, for all of us at that time,” Ausmus told the Times.
“It was only when I called Mrs Ausmus, 80, last week, that she found out Morgan had been freed,” said Times reporter Louise Callaghan.
As a Trump supporter, Ausmus said she was “saddened” to hear Trump had signed the order.
“After all she’s done to everybody,” said Ausmus, adding that Morgan “will probably go try to do something like it again.”