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Politics and Government News
Bobby Allyn, NPR

Trump commutes sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich

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Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich departs his Chicago home in 2012. On Tuesday, Trump commuted the 14-year sentence of Blagojevich, who has been serving a prison term after being convicted of corruption charges.
Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich departs his Chicago home in 2012. On Tuesday, Trump commuted the 14-year sentence of Blagojevich, who has been serving a prison term after being convicted of corruption charges.
Charles Rex Arbogast | AP

President Trump has commuted the sentence of the ex-governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, who has been imprisoned since being convicted in 2010 on corruption charges over his attempt to sell the Senate seat vacated by then-President Obama.

"Yes, we commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich," Trump told reporters on Tuesday.

The move would free Blagojevich from prison four years before he would have been eligible for parole and clear his corruption convictions.

Blagojevich, once seen as a rising star in the Democratic party, was a contestant on Trump's former reality show "The Celebrity Apprentice."

For years, his family and allies have been attempting to curry favor with the White House, with his wife, Patti, making repeated pleas on Fox News and other national outlets for Trump to intervene in her husband's case after exhausting all legal appeals.

Trump has made sympathetic comments about Blagojevich, having said publicly multiple times that Blagojevich's sentence was unfair.

Blagojevich, Trump said in 2018, was convicted for "being stupid, saying things that every other politician, you know, that many other politicians say."

Among the evidence federal prosecutors gathered on Blagojevich was his now-famous profanity on a phone call secretly recorded by the FBI about his attempt to profit from Obama's vacated Illinois Senate seat.

Blagojevich, 63, has been serving a 12-year prison sentence since 2012, and he would be eligible for release in 2024.

In 2010, after Blagojevich was removed as governor of Illinois over the corruption scandal, he appeared on "Apprentice," where Trump fired Blagojevich before saying "I feel badly for him. He tried, but I feel badly."

A jury convicted Blagojevich in 2010 of one count of lying to FBI agents, not reaching a consensus on another 23 other charges. But then in 2011, another jury convicted him of 17 counts, including 10 of wire fraud, and one count of soliciting bribes.

A judge sentenced him to 14 years in federal prison.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.