Trump Pardon’s former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich

Cnn
–

President Donald Trump on Monday pardoned former Illinois government director Rod Blagojevich, who was sent to jail on corruption fees around his time in office.

Trump, who signed the pardon in the oval office, described Blagojevich as a “very fine person” and said it was time to “let him have a normal life.”

“It was a kind of terrible injustice,” Trump said. “They were just after him. They follow many people. These are bad people, the other side. ”

Blagojevich, who was the Democratic Governor of Illinois from 2003 to 2009, was removed from Embedet and later convicted of charges that included a scheme of selling an agreement to fill the vacant Senate seat left by the then President Barack Obama.

A first trial resulted in a hung jury on many of the most important charges against him, but another resulted in Blagojevich’s conviction in 2011 on 17 of 20 corruption counts.

The former governor served eight years with a 14-year-old prison sentence before Trump commuted his sentence in his first period in early 2020. Trump’s decision was facing opposition from some conservative members of Congress and the White House advisers who warned the president that it would undermine his promise to “drain the swamp.”

At that time, Trump described Blagojevich as a “very nice person” and criticized his long prison sentence. Former Governor later transformed into a striking Trump spokesman who supported his presidential race from 2020 and 2024. Blagojevich told CNN last year he considers himself a “Trumpocrat,” as he described as a Democrat supporting Trump.

Blagojevich was also a participant in Trump’s TV show “The Celebrity Apprentice” in 2010 after he was removed from the office but before his first trial.