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 had been investigated for his ties to Russia and their attempts to interfere in the 2016 election. 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. Comey was working in the private sector during the Blagojevich investigation and indictment.
Former special counsel Robert Mueller, who oversaw the investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign, was FBI director during the investigation into Blagojevich.
Already this term, Trump has granted clemency to more than 1,500 people, all of whom were charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The clemency, announced on Trump’s first day back in office, paved the way for the release from prison of people found guilty of violent attacks on police as well as leaders of far-right extremist groups convicted of failed plots to keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.
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.”
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.”
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.
Trump’s decision to commute Blagojevich’s sentence was met with bipartisan criticism in Illinois. Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at the time that Trump “has abused his pardon power in inexplicable ways to reward his friends and condone corruption, and I deeply believe this pardon sends the wrong message at the wrong time.”
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, according to the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney.
Blagojevich also carries the burden of impeachment by the state Senate in 2009, an action which, according to the state constitution, bars him from holding any state office. Last year, a federal judge dismissed Blagojevich’s lawsuit claiming that the ban violated his and voters’ constitutional rights, but a spokesperson for the state Board of Elections said it’s unclear whether the pardon would clear the way for him to seek federal office.
Blagojevich was convicted on 18 counts. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in 2015 tossed out five of the convictions, including ones in which he offered to appoint someone to a high-paying job in the Senate.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.