President Trump on Monday signed a full and unconditional pardon for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who served eight years in jail on corruption expenses till Trump commuted his sentence in 2020.
“It is my honor to do it. I’ve watched him. He was arrange by loads of dangerous individuals,” Trump advised reporters within the Oval Workplace shortly after he had signed the pardon.
Blagojevich ran and served in workplace as a Democrat, however he has since backed Trump and attended final 12 months’s Republican Nationwide Conference.
He was faraway from workplace in 2009 and was later convicted of a big selection of corruption expenses, together with tried extortion of a kids’s hospital for marketing campaign contributions and attempting to promote former President Obama’s Senate seat after he was elected to the White Home in 2008. The previous governor started serving a 14-year jail sentence in 2012.
Trump commuted Blagojevich’s sentence in February 2020, calling it “ridiculous.” The 2 males knew one another beforehand from when the previous governor appeared as a contestant on “Celebrity Apprentice.”
Politico reported Blagojevich is being thought-about to function Trump’s ambassador to Serbia. Blagojevich in a latest assertion denied he’s looking for out the ambassadorship.
“I’m not asking President Trump for anything. I’m profoundly grateful to him for commuting my 14 year prison sentence and giving my daughter’s their father back,” Blagojevich posted on X. “What I am seeking is justice and for the truth of the corrupt prosecution against me to be exposed. If we are going to save our democracy, lawfare and the weaponization of prosecutors for political purposes must end and those who engage in it must be brought to account.”
Axios first reported on Trump’s plans to pardon the previous governor.
—Up to date at 6:24 p.m.
