Trump Voter Says President Freed the Scammer Who Cost Him His Savings
John Long is 80 years old. He's a retired pig farmer in Colorado. He voted for Donald Trump.
He found out at home on his farm that Trump had freed the woman who scammed him and his family out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Marian Morgan was sentenced to nearly 34 years in federal prison and ordered to pay back almost $20 million to her victims. She had run a Ponzi scheme starting around 2006, posing alongside co-conspirators as an exclusive group of financial advisers offering investment opportunities in Europe — low risk, enormous returns, money back within months. Long invested. So did his son. So did hundreds of other people across the country.
The money never came back. When investors started asking questions, Morgan sent them repeated reassurances that their funds were safe. When the SEC filed an enforcement action against her in 2009, prosecutors say she told investors to lie to authorities. She and her husband spent more than $10 million of investor money on themselves — luxury vehicles, a waterfront mansion, expensive purchases. They took in more than $28 million total.
She was convicted. She got 34 years. Justice was done.
Then Trump commuted her sentence to time served on May 28, 2025 — releasing her less than halfway through her sentence, not for good behavior and not because she had paid her victims back. Along with the commutation, Trump also eliminated her remaining restitution obligations. The $20 million she owed her victims was wiped away.
Long found out and said what a lot of people in his position would say.
"We had justice and now it's kind of like… 'we're going to let these criminals go out and do it again,'" he told The Sunday Times. He called Morgan "criminally insane" and warned she's "going to suck money out of somebody" else now that she's free.
Another victim, Judith Ausmus — also a Trump voter — lost her business and remortgaged her house after she and her brother invested $100,000 into the scheme. "It was tremendously hard times, all the way around, for all of us at that time," she said when she learned about the commutation.
The Broader Pattern
The Morgan commutation didn't happen in isolation. Since taking office for his second term, Trump has issued pardons and commutations at a pace and scope that has drawn significant bipartisan alarm.
His administration has extended clemency to nine corporations, erasing nearly $200 million in court-ordered penalties. One company alone had a $100 million penalty for failing to comply with federal regulations wiped clean. Taken together, critics say Trump's pardons have erased nearly $2 billion in victim repayment and taxpayer recovery across Medicare fraud, financial fraud, and tax fraud cases.
Senator Peter Welch of Vermont put it directly: "What this administration has done is create a pardon system where if you're connected to the president's inner circle or a wealthy donor, you essentially have a 'get out of jail free' card. That's corruption at the most basic level."
No connection between Marian Morgan and Trump's inner circle or donor network has been publicly identified. Why her sentence was commuted and her restitution wiped away while her victims — some of whom voted for the man who freed her — got nothing, has not been explained.
What the Judge Said at Sentencing
At the original sentencing, Judge Susan Bucklew specifically addressed the question of whether Morgan would reoffend if released. She said she wasn't concerned — but only because of the length of the sentence.
"If you were out in the next five years or ten years, would I have a concern about recidivism?" the judge said at the time, implying yes.
Morgan is out. John Long is worried about exactly what the judge was worried about.
He's 80 years old. He voted for Trump. He lost money he can't get back to a woman who is now free, with her restitution obligations erased, because of a presidential commutation with no public explanation.
"She's going to suck money out of somebody," he said.
He's probably right.
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