Trump pardons former Illinois governor Blagojevich

President Donald Trump on Monday pardoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose 14-year sentence for political corruption charges he commuted during his first term.

The Republican president called the Democratic former governor, who once appeared on Trump’s reality TV show “Celebrity Apprentice,” “a very fine person” and said the conviction and prison sentence “shouldn’t have happened.”

“I’ve watched him. He was set up by a lot of bad people, some of the same people I had to deal with,” Trump said at the White House as he signed the pardon.

Blagojevich was convicted in 2011 on charges that included seeking to sell an appointment to then-President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat and trying to shake down a children’s hospital. Blagojevich served eight years in prison before Trump cut short his term in 2020.

Blagojevich told reporters gathered outside his Chicago home on Monday that he was thankful.

The president made clear that he saw similarities between efforts to investigate his own conduct and those that took down Blagojevich.

“It was a prosecution by the same people — Comey, Fitzpatrick, the same group,” Trump told reporters. He was referring to Patrick Fitzgerald, the former U.S. attorney who prosecuted Blagojevich and later represented former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired from the agency in May 2017.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller, who oversaw the investigation into ties between between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign, was FBI director during the investigation into Blagojevich.

Trump expressed some sympathy for Blagojevich when he appeared on “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2010 before his first corruption trial started. When Trump fired Blagojevich as a contestant, he praised him for how he was fighting his criminal case, telling him, “You have a hell of a lot of guts.”

When asked about reports that he was considering appointing Blagojevich as ambassador to Serbia, Trump responded: “No, but I would. He’s now cleaner than anybody in this room.”

According to the Restoration of Rights Project, a pardon typically removes the bar to certain civil rights, including voting, serving on a jury, running for public office, owning a gun and retaining certain licenses.

The state Supreme Court revoked Blagojevich’s law license, however, an outcome a pardon can’t reverse. Blagojevich also carries the burden of impeachment by the state Senate in 2009, an action which bars him from holding any state office. 



AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast