Washington D.C. – Newsweek, January 28, 2025
Relatives of Marc Fogel, a U.S. citizen wrongfully detained in Russia, are cautiously optimistic he could soon return home to Pennsylvania with President Donald Trump back in office, Newsweek has learned.
Malphine Fogel, Fogel’s 95-year-old mother, said she’s hopeful Trump will make good on the promise he previously made when the pair met briefly during a rally in Pennsylvania last July moments before he was shot. The Republican candidate at the time repeatedly vowed to bring Marc home, she said.
In 2021, Marc Fogel was arrested in Moscow after entering the country with roughly 0.6 ounces of cannabis that his family and lawyer said was prescribed by a doctor in the U.S. to treat chronic pain. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison in June 2022.
“He asked about Marc and I told him,” Fogel recalled Monday. “I told him he had to remember his name and pointed his thumb up. And he said, ‘If I get in, we’ll get him out.'”
Trump made the promise three times during the encounter, accentuating each pledge with a thumb’s up, she said.
“It was not a long conversation, but he was very, very easy to talk to and very cordial,’ Malphine Fogel said of meeting Trump at the rally in Butler on July 13.
