The Biden administration slow-walked its designation of American Marc Fogel as a ‘wrongful detainee’ in Russia, Republicans and officials who previously worked on the effort to free Fogel told Fox News Digital.
‘Marc Fogel was viewed by the Biden administration as just an average White guy from flyover country in Western Pennsylvania,’ House Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., told Fox News Digital Tuesday. ‘He didn’t have any celebrity status; he wasn’t a military veteran; he wasn’t a journalist. So, the Biden administration overlooked him, and I think that’s absolutely appalling.’
Fogel, an American teacher from Western Pennsylvania, returned to the United States late Tuesday, after President Donald Trump secured his release.
Fogel had been arrested at an airport in Russia in 2021 for possession of medical marijuana and was sentenced to 14 years in a Russian prison.
The Biden administration did not designate Fogel a wrongful detainee until October 2024 and did not make that designation public until December 2024 – weeks after Trump was elected and the month before his inauguration.
Reschenthaler was first notified in 2021 of Fogel’s detention and began leading efforts with congressional colleagues to work with the Biden administration to bring Fogel home.
Along with a group of bipartisan lawmakers from Pennsylvania – including Reps. Brendan F. Boyle, Mike Doyle, Dwight Evans, Fred Keller, Mike Kelly, Conor Lamb, Dan Meuser, Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson, Susan Wild, and Sen. Pat Toomey — Reschenthaler penned an August 2022 letter to then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging him to classify Fogel as having been ‘wrongfully detained.’
The lawmakers argued that Fogel’s case was similar to that of WNBA player Brittney Griner, who had been imprisoned for a drug offense in Russia in February 2022. Griner, however, quickly was designated as being wrongfully detained and was returned home in December 2022.
Reschenthaler told Fox News Digital he spoke to Blinken ‘multiple times’ about Fogel but said the secretary of state ‘refused to give me or my colleagues any kind of explanation for why (Fogel) was not put on wrongfully detained status.’
When determining whether an American is wrongfully detained, the individual’s case is measured against criteria established by the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act. There were 11 criteria established by that law, and lawmakers said Fogel had met at least six of the criteria.
But the secretary of state has discretion over designations.
‘There are a lot of things that President Trump brings to the table that secured the release of Fogel,’ Reschenthaler told Fox News Digital. ‘For one, the Biden administration knew that Marc Fogel was going to be put on wrongfully detained status under Trump – and they didn’t want to give him the win, so they went ahead and did it on their way out the door.’
But Reschenthaler said Trump ‘has a lot more gravitas in talking to foreign leaders and adversaries.’
‘Because when President Trump talks – when he makes a threat or draws a red line – he will actually deliver on that promise,’ Reschenthaler said. ‘Biden would not make bold assertions, and there was nothing to back them off. The Russians did not take Biden or Tony Blinken seriously – and there was nothing to compel them to release Fogel.’
A former Biden administration official pushed back and defended Biden and Blinken’s work.
‘Whether someone is designated or not doesn’t change our level of advocacy, which is how we brought home over 70 people who’d been detained abroad,’ the former official told Fox News Digital. ‘We fought day after day to secure Marc’s release and we celebrate his return home.’
By June 2023, two years into Fogel’s detention without the wrongful detainee designation, Reschenthaler, Rep. Mark Kelly, R-Pa., and Pennsylvania Democrat Reps. Chris Deluzio and Brendan Boyle introduced the Marc Fogel Act, which would require the State Department to provide Congress with copies of documents and communications on why a wrongful determination had or had not been made in cases of U.S. nationals detained abroad within six months of arrest.
‘When you talked to career State Department officials, they understood what they were waiting for was a green light from the executive branch – but they could never say why they wouldn’t do these things,’ Kelly told Fox News Digital Tuesday. ‘They would say, ‘Well, we’re working on it. We’re working on it.’ But the stopping point was that they would not designate him the right way, and it seemed like they had no interest in getting it at all.’
Kelly told Fox News Digital that, within the ‘political State Department,’ there ‘just didn’t seem to be any energy toward getting that designation done.’
‘There have been so many things since I’ve been in Congress that you get stonewalled on, and that was just one of those things I felt at the beginning – we were just getting stonewalled,’ Kelly said. ‘They were just giving us conversation.’
Kelly said, though, that he could ‘feel that the career State Department personnel wanted to do something.’
‘But the political State Department was disinterested,’ Kelly said.
It wasn’t just Republican and Democratic lawmakers trying to aid the Biden administration in securing the return of Fogel to the United States.
Former White House national security advisor Robert O’Brien, who served during the first Trump administration, also got involved.
O’Brien told Fox News Digital that he sent a letter to the Russian ambassador as ‘a humanitarian gesture.’
‘I sent a letter to the Russian ambassador during the Biden years asking if they would consider a humanitarian release of Mr. Fogel,’ O’Brien told Fox News Digital. ‘The Russian ambassador sent a cordial, but non-committal, letter of response.’
O’Brien told Fox News Digital that he informed Ambassador Roger Carstens, Biden’s special envoy for hostage affairs, of his outreach. O’Brien told Fox News Digital that the Biden administration encouraged that outreach.
Carstens told Fox News Digital that he was ‘well aware that O’Brien sent the letter on Marc Fogel’s behalf.’
‘Robert O’Brien and his predecessor, Jim O’Brien, and I all worked together quite closely over the last four years to keep doing the hard work of bringing Americans home,’ Carstens, who also served during the final year of the first Trump administration, told Fox News Digital.
‘Robert’s efforts on Marc’s behalf, and his efforts on behalf of others that are unsung, showcase the bipartisan nature of these efforts and the importance that the senior leadership in this country places on bringing Americans home,’ Carstens said, calling O’Brien a ‘good personal friend and mentor.’
‘We worked hand-in-hand throughout my entire time in the Biden administration to devise ways to bring people home,’ Carstens said.
But as for Fogel, Carstens told Fox News Digital that the Biden administration did ‘work tirelessly to bring home Marc Fogel on the sides of negotiations of humanitarian release; negotiated separately as humanitarian release; and when designated, we included him in ongoing negotiations with the Russians.’
‘Fogel’s return is fantastic news, and the Trump administration is to be commended for bringing this American home and bringing so many Americans home in just the last few weeks from places like Venezuela, Gaza and now Russia,’ Carstens told Fox News Digital.
He added: ‘Bringing Americans home might very well be the last nonpartisan issue in this country and any administration that brings an American home should be congratulated for their efforts and their successes.’
And O’Brien, reacting to the news of Fogel’s return to the United States, told Fox News Digital: ‘If you asked me to define ‘America First,’ I’d define it as President Trump’s commitment to bringing Americans who were held overseas home.’
Meanwhile, Reschenthaler was at the White House Tuesday night with Trump to welcome Fogel back to the United States.
‘I was honored to be alongside President Trump at the White House to welcome Fogel back to the United States,’ Reschenthaler told Fox News Digital. ‘President Trump promised to bring him home and kept his word – building on the already great success of his weeks-old presidency.’
Reschenthaler added: ‘While President Biden refused to prioritize this Pennsylvanian, President Trump delivered and secured his release. The American people are overjoyed to have strong and skilled leadership back in charge.’
