(Headline USA) 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.
“I’ll always be profoundly grateful to President Trump for everything he’s done for me and my family,” Blagojevich said. “It’s everlasting gratitude. He’s a great guy.”
At the time that Trump announced Blagojevich’s commutation in 2020, Trump was investigated over false accusations the president was working with Russia. Trump 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.”
Despite that, Trump on Monday made the puzzling claim that he “didn’t know him,” but then said he believed Blagojevich appeared on his reality show “for a little while.”
Patti Blagojevich spent nearly two years making public pleas for her husband’s release during Trump’s first term, appearing often on Fox News Channel, which Trump devotedly watches. She drew parallels between her husband’s treatment and Trump’s, along with showering Trump with praise.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
