President Trump formally pardons former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich

CHICAGO (CBS) — President Trump formally issued a pardon to former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich Monday, a White Home official confirmed to CBS Information. The event was first reported by Axios.

“It is my honor to do it. I’ve watched him. He was arrange by plenty of dangerous individuals — a number of the identical folks that I needed to take care of. He wasn’t fairly as profitable, however he had anyone that noticed what was happening. I did not know him, aside from I consider he was on ‘The Apprentice’ for a short time,” stated President Trump. “He was only a very good particular person. He had a improbable spouse. She fought like hell to get him out. He was given a sentence of like 18 years [sic], and it was a horrible injustice. They only have been after him. They go after lots of people.”

Blagojevich was initially sentenced to 14 years in jail in December 2011 on 18 corruption expenses, together with trying to promote Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat after Obama gained the White Home in 2008. Blagojevich solely served practically eight years earlier than being commuted in February 2020 throughout Mr. Trump’s first presidency.

Upon his launch from jail, he informed CBS Chicago that he believed he “was despatched to jail for practising politics,” but in addition admitted to having made “errors.”  

Legally, a pardon goes additional than a sentence commutation. A pardon is official forgiveness — with all of the rights misplaced by a convicted felon being restored with a pardon.

Talking Monday night exterior his house in Chicago’s Ravenswood Manor neighborhood, Blagojevich expressed his “deepest and most profound and eternal gratitude” to President Trump.

“I take into consideration my relationship with President Trump, and it is actually—effectively, he is all the time doing issues for me, and he by no means asks me to do something for him. I had an opportunity to be on his tv present, and he ended what was an extended, lengthy, exhausting nightmare, after 2,986 days in jail — practically eight years — President Trump pulled me out of there,” Blagojevich stated, “and now he did this. And all I can inform you is that President Trump is a person who when he sees issues which are flawed, he rights them. He places an finish to them.”

Blagojevich maintained that he by no means broke any legal guidelines.

“I by no means took a penny. It was all politics — routine political conversations that have been begun by then-President-elect Obama, who despatched an emissary to me to speak about making what the appellate courtroom known as a routine political deal once they reversed the so-called sale of the Senate seat,” Blagojevich stated. “They have been faux expenses, and the massive lie was informed by the prosecutor and his workplace that did to me and my household what they did.”

Blagojevich additionally in contrast his personal plight to that of President Trump, who was convicted in New York in Could of final yr on 34 expenses in a scheme to affect the 2016 election via a hush cash cost to a porn star. In January, two months after being elected to a brand new time period, Mr. Trump obtained an unconditional discharge — which means he would face no penalties.

“His resilience, his energy, his fortitude, his unwillingness to provide in, is an inspiration and an instance of the type of chief that he’s,” Blagojevich stated. “I might by no means give in. I wish to say to the individuals of Illinois two issues. Primary, I by no means raised your taxes, and quantity two, I did not do it. It was all political discuss.”

Blagojevich stated he first realized of the pardon two weeks in the past whereas at house together with his spouse, Patti. The previous governor stated President Trump known as him and informed him what can be taking place this current Monday.

Months after his launch, Blagojevich filed a federal lawsuit claiming his elimination from workplace by the Illinois Senate following his 2009 impeachment trial was unconstitutional and sought the power to run for state or native elected workplace in Illinois.

In 2024, a decide issued a ruling in Blagojevich’s filed lawsuit looking for to overturn the ban on him working for state or native workplace. The decide’s ruling utilized allusions to Dr. Seuss to underline their message. 

“Learn usually Dr. Seuss, Marvin Ok. Mooney Will You Please Go Now! (1972) (‘The time has come. The time has come. The time is now. Simply Go. Go. GO! I do not care how. You possibly can go by foot. You possibly can go by cow. Marvin Ok. Mooney, will you please go now!’),” U.S. District Choose Steven Seeger wrote. 

Blagojevich and Mr. Trump have labored collectively up to now. He appeared in Season 3 of the fact competitors present “Superstar Apprentice,” by which he was “fired” by Mr. Trump through the season’s run.

In actual fact, Blagojevich talked about Mr. Trump — then not but president or a presidential candidate — within the hours earlier than reporting to jail in 2012.

“I acquired fired by Donald Trump,” Blagojevich stated on the time. “This factor I’ve acquired to do now could be worse.”

May Blagojevich be named ambassador to Serbia?

The information of the pardon units in movement a doable political revival. Whereas Blagojevich stays barred from holding elected workplace in Illinois after his impeachment from workplace, there was phrase these days he might be named ambassador to Serbia within the new Trump White Home.

In 1999, Blagojevich, who has Serbian roots, joined the Rev. Jesse Jackson as Jackson helped dealer the discharge of three American prisoners in Serbia. Blagojevich was a U.S. congressman on the time.

Now, 26 years and a political lifetime later, hypothesis has been that Blagojevich could also be dispatched again to the area of his ancestors by the very man who launched him from jail early — because the Rod Blagojevich story takes one other sudden flip.

When requested within the Oval Workplace whether or not he was contemplating Blagojevich for ambassador to Serbia, President Trump stated: “No, however I’d. He is now cleaner than anyone on this room.”

Blagojevich declined to remark Monday evening on the hypothesis concerning the ambassadorship.

The political land mines Blagojevich confronted resemble a lot of Trump’s political profession. Patrick Fitzgerald, the previous U.S. legal professional who prosecuted Blagojevich, represented former FBI Director James Comey, whom President Trump fired from the company in 2017.

Comey was working within the personal sector through the Blagojevich investigation and indictment.

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

What the pardon means for Blagojevich’s electability transferring ahead remained unclear late Monday.

Blagojevich himself is worked up and happy with the pardon. However different politicians from Illinois don’t see it that approach.

“I strongly disagree with President Donald Trump’s determination to pardon disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich,” Illinois Senate Republican Chief John Curran (R-Lemont) stated in a information launch. “Illinois taxpayers have and proceed to be burdened with the price of public corruption, and this pardon sends the flawed message.” 

U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) issued an announcement denouncing the pardon: “In a state with greater than its fair proportion of public corruption, the Blagojevich chapter nonetheless looms as one of many worst. America and Serbia deserve higher.”

Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza additionally issued an announcement, stating that Blagojevich was additionally convicted of attempting to shake down Youngsters’s Memorial Hospital — the predecessor to Lurie Youngsters’s Hospital:

“President Trump has the facility as president to pardon whomever he desires.

The president can pardon somebody as unworthy as Rod Blagojevich, who threatened to carry up funds from a youngsters’s hospital until the hospital’s CEO donated to his marketing campaign. That was my invoice to fund therapy for sick youngsters that Blagojevich held up.   

“Lengthy earlier than it was trendy to criticize the governor of my very own occasion, I used to be a lonely voice calling for Blagojevich’s impeachment. I stand by my remarks on the ground of the Home throughout his impeachment after I co-sponsored the invoice to launch the impeachment committee in opposition to Blagojevich:   

“‘It is amazingly becoming that Governor Blagojevich face impeachment right now of all days on his self-admitted hero Richard Nixon’s birthday. Their frequent bond of impeachment will unite them in historical past’s darkish annals of corruption. However even Nixon displayed extra integrity than Blagojevich by resigning earlier than he was impeached.’

“‘I sponsored Home Invoice 5331 that might have offered $8 million for specialty care pediatricians in Illinois. These sick youngsters, Governor, they’re nonetheless ready. By no means in my wildest goals might I’ve imagined that Governor Blagojevich would have pulled again funds for sick youngsters with a purpose to extort the president of the youngsters’s hospital.’

“A pardon doesn’t erase his crimes from the reminiscence of many Illinoisans whose belief he violated and it by no means will.”

contributed to this report.