Trump pardons ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich 5 years after commuting his sentence

WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 signed the pardon on Monday, calling the Democratic former governor “a very fine person.”

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, who appeared on Trump’s reality TV show “Celebrity Apprentice,” served eight years in prison before Trump cut short his term in 2020.

The former governor’s wife, Patti Blagojevich, reached by phone, referred a reporter to a spokesperson who did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

“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.

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.