For most of her time as Illinois first lady, Patti Blagojevich preferred a behind-the-scenes role, advising her husband on myriad topics while building a real estate career that leaned heavily on the couple’s clout.
But since her husband’s arrest nearly a dozen years ago, Blagojevich has commanded the spotlight as she has done almost anything — from eating bugs on reality television to courting President Donald Trump — to help win her husband’s freedom. She has made scores of public pleas on his behalf over the past decade on television and social media, usually painting her family as the victims of overzealous prosecutors and political enemies.
And in many of her carefully crafted pleas, only President Trump had the brains and the bravado to remedy the perceived injustice.
“They are trying to undo elections and play politics instead of doing what they are supposed to do,” she said on Fox News in 2018. “It takes a strong leader like President Trump to right these wrongs.”
Her constant flattery proved successful Tuesday, as Trump commuted Rod Blagojevich’s 14-year prison sentence and cleared the way for him to leave prison four years early. In a clear nod that Patti Blagojevich’s messages were received, the president complimented her resolve several months ago.
“I watched his wife, on television, saying that the young girls’ father has been in jail for now seven years, and they’ve never seen him outside of an orange uniform. You know, the whole thing,” Trump told reporters in August on Air Force One. “His wife, I think, is fantastic. And I’m thinking about commuting his sentence very strongly. I think he was — I think it’s enough: seven years. I’m very impressed with his family. I’m very impressed with his wife. I mean, she has lived for this. She has — she’s one hell of a woman. She has lived. She goes on and she makes her case. And it’s really very sad.”
The president again mentioned the family’s struggles Tuesday as he announced the commutation. He spoke about the Blagojevich daughters growing older and missing important time with their father.
“I watched his wife on television. … They rarely get to see their father outside of an orange uniform,” Trump said. “I saw that and I did commute his sentence so he’ll be able to go back home with his family.”
Patti Blagojevich — a daughter of the Chicago Democratic machine — learned quickly that the best way to reach the Republican president was to lavish praise on him while appearing on Fox News. The offspring and wife of deft politicians, she stroked the president’s ego during each appearance, expressing her gratitude to him and recalling how “kind” he was to her family when the former governor appeared on “The Celebrity Apprentice.”
“I don’t think there’s a better way to get a message to (Trump),” Rod Blagojevich’s former defense attorney Aaron Goldstein told the Tribune last year. “She’s doing what she needs to do to get a message in front of him and she is doing a great job of it.”
Patti Blagojevich did not speak to the media camped outside her Ravenswood Manor home Tuesday but tweeted that there would be a news conference at the home Wednesday morning, after her husband was released Tuesday night from a prison in Colorado.
In pleading her position, Patti Blagojevich consistently described her family’s plight in terms that would appeal to Trump, specifically criticizing former FBI Director James Comey and special counsel Robert Mueller for their roles in both the Russian election interference probe and her husband’s conviction. She also tweeted opinion pieces, including one written by her husband from prison, opposing Trump’s impeachment and accusing the U.S. Justice Department of overzealous, politically driven prosecutions.
“I see that these same people that did this to my family, (who) secretly taped us, twisted the facts, perverted the law (and put) my husband in jail — these people are trying to do it on a larger scale (to Trump),” she said in 2018 on “The Story With Martha MacCallum” on Fox News.
Trump repeated the allegation Tuesday, suggesting the Mueller investigation was led by the “same group” that secured the ex-governor’s conviction.
Mueller was head of the FBI during the Blagojevich probe, though then-U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey made the decision to tap the governor’s phones. Comey was U.S. deputy attorney general when the investigation into Blagojevich’s administration began, but he moved to the private sector in 2005 and played no role in Blagojevich’s indictment.
“It’s inaccurate,” Robert Grant, who headed the FBI’s Chicago office during the investigation, said of Trump’s allegation. “Patti has been very effective in repeating that conspiracy on television. She knows it gets under his skin.”
History, however, has mattered little during this unorthodox clemency process, which began in 2018 after Trump told reporters he was considering commuting Blagojevich’s sentence and suggested the disgraced governor shouldn’t have gone to jail for “being stupid.” It was a highly unusual statement for a sitting president to make, in large part because Blagojevich’s legal team had not yet requested a pardon and the U.S. Department of Justice had not made a recommendation.
Regardless, Patti Blagojevich already had made several appearances on Fox News by that time to plead for her husband’s freedom.
“She knew the right button to push,” said former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Cramer, who is now managing director for the Berkeley Research Group. “And in this case, the only button was Fox News. She did what a spouse would do in this case: You go on Fox, you blame Mueller and Comey and you hope no rational person looks into it.”
Patti Blagojevich was never charged with wrongdoing, but her own ambitions and brashness were alleged in a 76-page federal criminal complaint released the day of Rod Blagojevich’s arrest: She helped her husband hatch a plan to sell Barack Obama‘s old U.S. Senate seat, the document said; she angled to trade his power for lucrative spots on corporate boards; and she unleashed an obscenity-filled tirade suggesting that Tribune Co. ownership should “just fire” Chicago Tribune editorial writers if the company wanted the state to help it unload Wrigley Field to ease its crushing debt.
“Hold up that (expletive) Cubs (expletive),” she is quoted as saying in the background as her husband talked on the phone, authorities alleged. “(Expletive) them.”
While her husband waged losing battles against impeachment and the criminal charges, Patti Blagojevich mounted a campaign of her own. She agreed to appear on “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here,” a reality show on which she ate a tarantula in the Costa Rican jungle, formed an alliance with NBA star John Salley and shed tears about her family’s plight.
She continued her public sympathy campaign throughout her husband’s trial and incarceration, often using social media to stoke support and sympathy. She often tagged the president in flattering tweets.
“Today is another sad day on this painful journey as it marks 7 years that Rod has been away from home,” she tweeted in March 2019. “President Trump was correct when he tweeted 7 years ago today: ‘It’s outrageous that Blagojevich goes to jail for 14 years when killers and sex offenders are out walking the streets. Is this justice…I don’t think so.’ We remain hopeful that better days are ahead, and we are grateful for the President’s support and kind words, going back to 2012.”
She also tweeted an op-ed piece written by her husband, published on Newsmax, that argued modern-day House Democrats also would have tried to impeach Abraham Lincoln for a number of reasons, including because of the Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery. The column became an oft-repeated talking point during the impeachment hearings.
“Rod is a bit of a Lincoln Scholar,” she wrote in tweet that linked to the column. “He has at least 30 books on Lincoln alone in his study not counting the dozen more on other Civil War Era figures.”
Indeed, Patti Blagojevich is no stranger to rough-and-tumble politics. She grew up the oldest daughter of longtime 33rd Ward boss Richard Mell, bearing witness to the ways of the Chicago machine since grade school. She famously feuded with her father after Mell — then the 33rd Ward alderman — accused the governor of pay-to-play politics in 2005.
The Blagojeviches never moved to Springfield during his tenure, opting instead to raise their two young daughters in their Ravenswood Manor home. While championing such causes as literacy, children’s health care and public breastfeeding, the first lady, who has a degree in economics from the University of Illinois, continued to work as a real estate agent until a federal investigation heated up.
A Tribune investigation revealed she earned more than $700,000 in commissions on deals after her husband began raising money in 2000 for his first gubernatorial campaign.
Of those commissions, the Tribune found that more than three-quarters came from clients with connections.
As her commissions faded, she briefly took a job as an investment banker.
Since her husband’s incarceration, she helped her father start a lobbying firm and has worked as a financial adviser. Her most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show she juggles several part-time positions in insurance sales, investment advising and rental property management.
For practical purposes, Patti Blagojevich has been a single mother for the past seven years, raising daughters Amy, now 23, and Annie, now 16, with help from her family.
Amy Blagojevich graduated from Northwestern University in 2018 and earned her master’s degree in marketing from the University of Edinburgh in December. Her family had hoped Trump would free Blagojevich in time to attend both ceremonies.
“I can tell you that life without my husband has been very difficult,” Patti Blagojevich wrote in an op-ed published in the Washington Examiner in July 2018. “It’s hard on me, and it’s even harder on our two girls. And every day we wake up thinking this was all a bad dream.”
After Trump teased the idea of a pardon again last August, Patti Blagojevich once again expressed hope on social media that her husband wouldn’t miss anymore milestones.
“Our President’s comments on Air Force One…make us very hopeful that our almost 11 year nightmare might soon be over,” she tweeted. “We are very grateful.”
Chicago Tribune’s Javonte Anderson contributed.
