President Donald Trump has once again dangled the idea of commuting the 14-year prison sentence of disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that he was “very strongly” considering springing Blagojevich from prison almost five years early.
The president’s Wednesday night remarks — largely echoing comments he made 14 months ago — gave new hope to Blagojevich’s wife, Patti, who released a statement Thursday saying the family was “very hopeful that our almost 11 year nightmare might soon be over.”
Late Thursday, Trump tweeted that “White House staff is continuing the review” of a possible commutation for Blagojevich.
But Trump also showed he has done little homework on the case since he first raised the idea of using his powers of executive clemency for Blagojevich in May 2018.
Trump repeated the same misstatement he made last year that Blagojevich was sentenced to 18 years in prison and once again mentioned only one wiretapped phone call by Blagojevich, when much of the evidence presented at trial came from witnesses who said the governor was shaking them down for campaign cash in exchange for official acts.
The victims included the then-CEO of Children’s Memorial Hospital, now Lurie Children’s Hospital, who said he was pressured to contribute tens of thousands of dollars in exchange for state funding.
“He’s been in jail for seven years over a phone call where nothing happens. But over a phone — where nothing happens,” Trump said after making visits to Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, following mass shootings in those cities over the weekend. “But over a phone call which, you know, he shouldn’t have said what he said, but it was braggadocio you would say.”
Such mischaracterizations have been blasted before by those who investigated and prosecuted Blagojevich.
Robert Grant, the former head of the FBI in Chicago who helped lead the sprawling Operation Board Games investigation that ultimately led to Blagojevich’s downfall, told the Tribune after Trump first raised the possibility of commutation last year that any executive clemency for the ex-governor would be “nothing but a mean-spirited slap” at Trump’s perceived political enemies.
“It’s clear (Trump) has never seen any of the evidence,” Grant said in May 2018. “He took his talking points from Patti Blagojevich. It’s pure fantasy. This was flat-out, old-fashioned corruption, pure and simple.”
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, however, Trump said he thought the former Democratic governor — who had been a contestant on Trump’s former NBC show “The Celebrity Apprentice” before his firing — was mistreated.
“I thought he was treated unbelievably unfairly; he was given close to 18 years in prison,” said Trump, a Republican. “And a lot of people thought it was unfair, like a lot of other things — and it was the same gang, the Comey gang and all these sleazebags that did it.”
The president was referring to former FBI Director James Comey, a frequent Trump target who he contends sought to politicize the nation’s top law enforcement agency in the 2016 election in which Trump faced Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. After taking office, the president fired Comey amid the investigation into Russia’s interference in the election and whether the Trump campaign was involved.
The president’s comments mirrored what Patti Blagojevich has said in not-so-veiled attempts to link her husband’s prosecution to some of Trump’s perceived political enemies.
In reality, Comey was in private practice from 2005 to 2013 — virtually the entire time Blagojevich was investigated and prosecuted.
Blagojevich, who served as Illinois governor from 2003 until his impeachment and removal from office in 2009, was sentenced to 14 years on federal corruption charges after his June 2011 conviction.
Blagojevich was convicted of attempting to use his office to personally benefit himself, offering the former U.S. Senate seat of then-President-elect Barack Obama in return for a prosperous job or campaign contributions.
Some counts involving the alleged sale of the Senate seat were subsequently thrown out, but his sentence and corruption conviction for that scandal and other actions stood. In addition to the children’s hospital executive, Blagojevich was convicted of attempting to shake down the horse racetrack owner to sign favorable legislation into law in exchange for campaign donations.
Government agents secretly recorded Blagojevich discussing the Senate seat appointment with his onetime deputy governor, Doug Scofield.
“I’ve got this thing and it’s f—— golden,” Blagojevich famously said in the secretly recorded conversation. “I’m not just giving it up for f—— nothing.”
His conviction came after winning office on a pledge to bring an end to corruption in Illinois following the federal conviction of his predecessor, Republican Gov. George Ryan, on charges of steering state business to cronies for bribes, of gutting corruption-fighting efforts to protect political fundraising and of misusing state resources for political gain.
In June 2018, Blagojevich’s attorneys moved to formally seek a commutation from the White House after Trump said the former governor “shouldn’t have been put in jail.”
Trump critics have long considered that a Blagojevich pardon or commutation could come as an attempt by the president to shift the national conversation from more controversial matters affecting the country or his administration. His remarks came amid controversy over a Republican response to gun violence over the killing of 31 people in mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton.
On Wednesday night, Trump ventured back into the reporters’ space aboard Air Force One en route to returning to Joint Base Andrews and said, “I’m thinking about commuting his sentence.
“I would think that there have been many politicians — I’m not one of them by the way — but have said a lot worse over telephones,” the president said. “And I watched his wife on television saying that the young girl’s father has been in jail for now seven years and they’ve never seen him outside of an orange uniform,” Trump continued, referring to Blagojevich’s wife and daughters, Amy and Annie. “His wife I think is fantastic and I’m thinking about commuting his sentence very strongly. I think it’s enough, seven years.”
Patti Blagojevich has made repeated visits on Fox News, the president’s favorite TV news channel, to seek Trump’s approval for a pardon and commutation in light of Trump’s displeasure over the actions of the Justice Department and its investigation led by former special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election and actions by the Trump campaign.
“I’m very impressed with his family. I’m very impressed with his wife,” Trump told reporters. “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, it’s really very sad.”
Blagojevich was convicted in 2011 on 17 counts connected to the attempted U.S. Senate seat sale and the fundraising shakedowns of the hospital executive and a racetrack owner. Less than a year earlier, an initial trial had ended with a jury deadlocked on all but one count of lying to the FBI, forcing the retrial.
In Blagojevich’s first appeal, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in 2015 threw out on technical grounds five counts involving the governor’s efforts to trade the Senate seat for a job for himself.
But the court left intact the conviction on perhaps the most sensational allegations — that Blagojevich schemed to nominate Jesse Jackson Jr. to the Senate post in exchange for $1.5 million in campaign cash. The panel also tempered the small victory for Blagojevich by calling the evidence against him overwhelming and making it clear that the original sentence was not out of bounds.
That set up another sentencing hearing in August 2016 that focused largely on Blagojevich’s purported rehabilitation in prison, where he teaches history and counsels inmates and even served as lead singer in a prison band, The Jailhouse Rockers. Both of Blagojevich’s daughters gave impassioned pleas for mercy, and Blagojevich himself apologized for his “mistakes” without specifically mentioning the crimes for which he was convicted.
U.S. District Judge James Zagel, however, resentenced Blagojevich to the same 14-year prison term.
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