Robert Morris, the well-connected megachurch pastor and former spiritual adviser to President Donald Trump, was released from prison in Oklahoma on Tuesday after serving a six-month stint for child sexual abuse charges.
According to CBS News, “an automated notice sent by court officials showed Morris left the jail in Pawhuska just after midnight. The Osage County Sheriff’s Office said Morris was released in the early morning hours due to safety concerns.”
Morris, who founded the Gateway megachurch in Texas, was a prominent political ally of the president in his first term and a friend to other conservative lawmakers. In 2020, during an event at Morris’ church, Trump touted the pastor as a “great” person with a “great reputation.”
Fast-forward to last October, when Morris pleaded guilty to five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child in the 1980s against Cindy Clemishire, who came forward in 2024 with allegations that Morris, her pastor in Oklahoma at the time, molested her when she was 12 years old. NBC News reported last March on the “frontier-era law” that Oklahoma’s attorney general used to charge Morris. The former pastor reached a plea agreement under which he was given a 10-year sentence but only required to serve six months in jail, to register as a sex offender and to pay $250,000 in restitution.
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Ja’han Jones
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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