Nearly five years after commuting former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s federal prison sentence, President Donald Trump granted a full pardon to the disgraced former governor who was convicted more than 13 years ago on an array of corruption charges, including fundraising schemes and attempting to sell a U.S. Senate seat for his personal benefit, The Associated Press reported.
Blagojevich, outside his Ravenswood Manor home on Monday, commented before the pardon was issued but told reporters he will “always be profoundly grateful to President Trump for everything he’s done for me and my family.”
“It’s everlasting gratitude,” Blagojevich said. “He’s a great guy. I think the world of him. I think he’s going to do great for America.”
The pardon comes as the president is also said to be considering Blagojevich, who became a devout Trump political disciple after receiving his commutation on Feb. 18, 2020, as the next U.S. ambassador to Serbia, where the former governor’s family comes from. On that issue, Blagojevich declined to comment Monday.
Unlike the commutation, which left intact Blagojevich’s federal conviction, the Trump presidential pardon wipes clean the criminal slate of the only Illinois governor in history to be impeached and convicted by the General Assembly and banned from seeking any state elected office ever again. It is unlikely the Trump pardon would allow Blagojevich to seek state office since the courts have ruled impeachment is a political — not criminal — process.
If he had served his full prison sentence, Blagojevich would have been released last year. At the time of Trump’s commutation, Blagojevich had served eight years of a 14-year sentence in a Colorado prison.
After Trump’s 2020 commutation, Blagojevich returned to his Ravenswood Manor home — one of numerous locations where federal agents had secretly taped him and where he also had been arrested on Dec. 9, 2008.
Hours after the arrest, then-U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald detailed elements of a crime spree, which also included attempting to shake down a children’s hospital for campaign donations, that he said “would make Lincoln roll over in his grave.” It also prompted then-FBI Special Agent Robert Grant to declare that if Illinois wasn’t the most corrupt state in the union, “it’s certainly one hell of a competitor.”
A Trump move pardoning Blagojevich continues a second-term presidential theme of “reality TV” serving as a basis for many of Trump’s actions, including putting reality TV stars in administrative posts.
Pete Hegseth, a former weekend Fox News co-host now serves as defense secretary and former MTV “Real World” star and Fox Business News host Sean Duffy is transportation secretary. Trump has nominated Linda McMahon, the former head of wrestling’s WWE and his previous Small Business Administration administrator, as education secretary and former TV doctor and unsuccessful Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz as head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The pardon continues a relationship Blagojevich began with Trump in 2010 when the impeached governor — conducting a high-profile series of pre-trial TV appearances to declare his innocence — appeared on Trump’s “Celebraty Apprentice” show, only to be bounced by the future president for his lack of knowledge of “Harry Potter” and ineptness in using a laptop and cell phone.
“Governor, I have great respect for you,” Trump told the state’s former chief executive as he fired him. “I have great respect for your tenacity, for the fact that you just don’t give up.” Trump later told the show’s producer, Mark Burnett, “I feel badly for him. He tried, but I feel badly,” according to the Washington Post.
A year later, Blagojevich was convicted on 18 federal corruption counts and sentenced to prison.
Throughout his first term as president, Trump had repeatedly made suggestions about freeing Blagojevich, criticizing the length of the prison sentence but never discussing the criminal acts that led to them, including trying to auction off the appointment to then-President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat for personal or political benefit.
Apparently helping drive Trump’s thoughts were repeated appearances on his favorite channel, Fox News, by Blagojevich’s wife, Patti, the daughter of former Chicago North Side ward boss Dick Mell. She frequently invoked allegations of a politicized Department of Justice system being used to prosecute her husband — a subject of interest to Trump — though she often misstated facts about the prosecution.
Patti Blagojevich did her own stint on the short-lived reality show “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here,” when a judge would not let her husband travel to Costa Rica.
Blagojevich’s name has surfaced in news reports as being under consideration by Trump to serve as ambassador to Serbia. Blagojevich’s father, who once was a steelworker at the former A. Finkl site on the North Side, was of Serbian descent, and the self-described “Trumpocrat” headed up a “Serbs for Trump” rally during last year’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Speaking for nearly a half-hour speech, Blagojevich sought to portray both himself and Trump, convicted in a felony “hush money” case in New York, as victims of “a corrupt system that we have now in America.” Afterward, an unrepentant Blagojevich called both men’s convictions “fraudulent.”
Two GOP members of Illinois’ congressional delegation, U.S. Reps. Mike Bost of Murphysboro and Darin LaHood, of Peoria co-signed a letter in 2018 to Trump expressing their concerns about granting clemency to Blagojevich. Both men said during the RNC that the former governor’s case can’t be compared to Trump’s.
LaHood, a former federal prosecutor, said he thought Trump’s 2020 commutation of Blagojevich sent the wrong message.
“President Trump talks about draining the swamp,” LaHood said. “Nothing exemplifies the swamp more than Rod Blagojevich and his actions.”
Blagojevich never acknowledged public guilt for his actions. But one of his best views of the public was one he never thought would become public–a Nov. 4, 2008, phone call with an aide taped by federal agents just weeks before his arrest following a Chicago Tribune poll showing only 13% of voters approved of his job performance as governor.
“I (expletive) busted my ass and pissed people off and gave your grandmother a free (expletive) ride on a bus. OK? I gave your (expletive) baby a chance to have health care. And what do I get for that? Only 13% of you all out there think I’m doing a good job. So (expletive) all of you,” Blagojevich said.
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Source: American Military News
