CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS PHOTO BY ANDREW ADAMS
Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his spouse, Patti, outdoors their Chicago residence shortly after Blagojevich obtained a full pardon from President Donald Trump.
President Donald Trump on Monday granted a full pardon to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted on 18 corruption counts, together with for his try to promote President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat in 2008 – and who holds the excellence of being the state’s solely impeached governor.
Trump’s pardon comes 5 years after he commuted Blagojevich’s 14-year jail sentence in February 2020, sending the disgraced ex-governor residence from lockup in a low-security Colorado facility six years early.
Each within the leadup to commuting Blagojevich’s sentence and on Monday, Trump used the previous Democrat’s felony case as a approach to low cost the myriad investigations, indictments and convictions he’s confronted, at the same time as a U.S. Supreme Courtroom ruling final yr granted him immunity from felony legal responsibility for his official acts.
Signing the pardon within the Oval Workplace on Monday night, Trump falsely claimed Blagojevich was “arrange by a whole lot of dangerous folks – a few of the identical those that I needed to cope with.”
The president then stated he didn’t know Blagojevich however added as an afterthought that “I consider he was on ‘The Apprentice,’” referring to the NBC actuality TV present he hosted via 2015.
Blagojevich was “fired” on the fourth episode of “The Celeb Apprentice” in 2010 throughout a media blitz the out-of-work governor went on after his indictment in an try to promote his narrative.
Blagojevich served six years as governor earlier than his December 2008 arrest and his subsequent impeachment in January 2009.
Although his first trial resulted in a hung jury on 23 of 24 counts, he was finally convicted in 2011 on fees starting from shaking down a kids’s hospital govt and a racetrack proprietor for marketing campaign donations to the tried Senate seat sale, for which the governor held appointment energy.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s mugshot, taken by the U.S. Marshals Service in Chicago after his arrest in December 2008.
In a now-infamous wiretapped name after Obama’s election to the White Home, Blagojevich referred to his soon-to-be-vacated submit within the Senate as “f—— golden,” telling an adviser that he didn’t intend on “giving it up for f—— nothing.”
Blagojevich tried to extract worth from the appointment, together with in search of marketing campaign money, high-paying jobs for each himself and his spouse Patti, and an appointment to Obama’s future presidential cupboard – or an ambassadorship.
Sixteen years later, Blagojevich might lastly get that ambassadorship.
Trump is contemplating appointing Blagojevich as ambassador to his household’s native Serbia, according to a report last week from POLITICO.
When he signed the pardon Monday, Trump denied contemplating Blagojevich for ambassador, however then stated it wasn’t out of the playing cards.
“No, however I’d (appoint Blagojevich),” Trump stated. “He’s now cleaner than anyone on this room.”
Since his launch from jail in 2020, Blagojevich has known as himself a “Trumpocrat,” disavowing his former political social gathering and tying himself intently to Trump. Finally summer season’s Republican Nationwide Conference in Milwaukee, the ex-governor spoke at a “Serbs for Trump” gathering.
In a information convention outdoors of his residence on Chicago’s Northwest Facet Monday night, Blagojevich declined to touch upon the potential appointment. He was in any other case unrepentant as ever, railing in opposition to what he known as the “weaponization of prosecutors for political functions.”
Blagojevich maintained that what the FBI caught on wiretapped calls was merely a “routine political deal” – an argument mirrored by attorneys for the ex-governor’s political nemesis, former Illinois Home Speaker Michael Madigan, who’s at the moment awaiting a verdict in his own corruption trial.
Blagojevich declined to touch upon Madigan’s case, as a substitute delivering a variation on the identical message he’s had since his arrest.
“I wish to say to the folks of Illinois two issues,” he stated. “No. 1: I by no means raised your taxes. No. 2: I didn’t do it.”
Each Republicans and Democrats had been crucial of Trump’s commutation resolution in 2020, although elected officers had been sluggish to react Monday night.
In a social media submit on X, Senate Minority Chief John Curran, R-Downers Grove, stated he disagreed with Trump’s resolution.
“Illinois taxpayers have and proceed to be burdened with the price of public corruption, and this pardon sends the incorrect message,” Curran wrote.
Illinois’ senior Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s X account posted “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,” the post said.
Blagojevich was formally disbarred a couple of months after his launch from jail – a transfer he decried Monday evening, calling the Illinois’ lawyer disciplinary board “sons of b——.”
He additionally once more claimed he had no plans to return to politics, regardless of having sued in 2021 for the power to as soon as once more run for state or native workplace in Illinois.
However a federal decide final yr quoted Dr. Seuss in dismissing the ex-governor’s movement, writing that Blagojevich’s lawsuit wasn’t even filed in the best venue to overview the Illinois Senate’s unanimous 2009 vote barring him from ever once more holding workplace in Illinois.
Even with out the precise ban on Blagojevich holding workplace, the federal seventh Circuit Courtroom of Appeals in Chicago has upheld an Illinois’ law that bars those that’ve been convicted of “notorious crimes” – together with bribery – from holding workplace in Illinois. Trump’s pardon doesn’t erase the ex-governor’s convictions; solely expungement can try this.
The U.S. structure places few restrictions on holding federal workplace, which means Blagojevich could be free to run for his outdated congressional seat he held from 1997 to 2003.
The ex-governor collects a $15,000 annual pension from his years in congress however after his 2011 conviction, he was barred from amassing the roughly $65,000 per yr pension he’d in any other case be entitled to for his years within the Normal Meeting.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan information service that distributes state authorities protection to a whole bunch of stories shops statewide. It’s funded primarily by the Illinois Press Basis and the Robert R. McCormick Basis.
