(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump has signed an executive order pardoning Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who was sentenced to 14 years in prison before Trump commuted his sentence in 2020.
“It’s my honor to do it,” Trump said during remarks from the Oval Office on Monday. “He was set up.”
Trump called the Democratic former governor a “very fine person” and said he didn’t know him other than that he was on his TV show, “Celebrity Apprentice.”
When asked if Trump would consider Blagojevich as ambassador to Serbia, Trump said “no, but I would,” adding that “if he got a pardon, he’s cleaner than anybody in the room.”
“Let me tell you — from the bottom of my heart — how deep my appreciation and gratitude is for President Trump,” Blagojevich said in a press conference Monday evening reacting to the news.
The past few months, Blagojevich has been active on X, expressing his support for the president and reposting content from Trump’s inner circle, including Elon Musk and Kash Patel, Trump’s choice to be director of the FBI.
“Trump freed me & Obama sold me out so I’m biased, but I believe Trump has done more as President in his whirlwind first 8 days than Obama did in his entire 8 years. What do you think?” Balgojevich wrote on X last month.
Blagojevich, a Democrat and self-proclaimed “Trump-o-crat,” responded to former President Joe Biden’s preemptive pardons in January, telling Piers Morgan Uncensored that he believed such actions were the “wrong things to do.”
“I mean, President Biden weaponized the justice department against Donald Trump. So he just assumed that Trump’s going to do the same thing to his people that he did to Trump and to Trump’s people,” he said, adding that “there’s no evidence that President Trump is going to do anything.”
On his first day back in office, Trump announced sweeping pardons and commutations for nearly all of the rioters charged with the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
“I pardon people that were assaulted themselves. They were assaulted by our government,” Trump said on Sunday in regards to his Jan. 6 pardons.
In 2011, Blagojevich was convicted on 17 counts of corruption, including an attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat that former President Barack Obama vacated after being elected to the White House in 2008.
During his first term, Trump called Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence a “tremendously powerful, ridiculous” sentence, though he had also expressed that he did not know Blagojevich well.
The former governor was expected to be released in 2024, factoring in two years of credit for good behavior. He began serving time in 2012, and Trump commuted his sentence in 2020.
Upon release, Blagojevich expressed his “profound and everlasting gratitude for President Trump,” calling this an “act of kindness” that represented the “beginning of the process to actually turn an injustice into a justice.”
“He didn’t have to do this, he’s a Republican president, I was a Democratic governor,” Blagojevich also said at the time.
In 2009 while appearing on NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” Blagojevich can be seen getting “fired” by Trump.
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