President Trump formally pardons former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich | USAEMALL.com

CHICAGO (CBS) — President Trump officially issued a pardon to former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich Monday, a White House official confirmed to CBS News. The development was first reported by Axios.

“It’s my honor to do it. I’ve watched him. He was set up by a lot of bad people — some of the same people that I had to deal with. He wasn’t quite as successful, but he had somebody that saw what was going on. I didn’t know him, other than I believe he was on ‘The Apprentice’ for a little while,” said President Trump. “He was just a very nice person. He had a fantastic wife. She fought like hell to get him out. He was given a sentence of like 18 years [sic], and it was a terrible injustice. They just were after him. They go after a lot of people.”

Blagojevich was originally sentenced to 14 years in prison in December 2011 on 18 corruption charges, including attempting to sell Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat after Obama won the White House in 2008. Blagojevich only served nearly eight years before being commuted in February 2020 during Mr. Trump’s first presidency.

Upon his release from prison, he told CBS Chicago that he believed he “was sent to prison for practicing politics,” but also admitted to having made “mistakes.”  

Legally, a pardon goes further than a sentence commutation. A pardon is official forgiveness — with all the rights lost by a convicted felon being restored with a pardon.

Speaking Monday evening outside his home in Chicago’s Ravenswood Manor neighborhood, Blagojevich expressed his “deepest and most profound and everlasting gratitude” to President Trump.

“I think about my relationship with President Trump, and it’s really—well, he’s always doing things for me, and he never asks me to do anything for him. I had a chance to be on his television show, and he ended what was a long, long, hard nightmare, after 2,986 days in prison — nearly eight years — President Trump pulled me out of there,” Blagojevich said, “and now he did this. And all I can tell you is that President Trump is a man who when he sees things that are wrong, he rights them. He puts an end to them.”

Blagojevich maintained that he never broke any laws.

“I never took a penny. It was all politics — routine political conversations that were begun by then-President-elect Obama, who sent an emissary to me to talk about making what the appellate court called a routine political deal when they reversed the so-called sale of the Senate seat,” Blagojevich said. “They were fake charges, and the big lie was told by the prosecutor and his office that did to me and my family what they did.”

Blagojevich also compared his own plight to that of President Trump, who was convicted in New York in May of last year on 34 charges in a scheme to influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn star. In January, two months after being elected to a new term, Mr. Trump received an unconditional discharge — meaning he would face no penalties.

“His resilience, his strength, his fortitude, his unwillingness to give in, is an inspiration and an example of the kind of leader that he is,” Blagojevich said. “I could never give in. I want to say to the people of Illinois two things. Number one, I never raised your taxes, and number two, I didn’t do it. It was all political talk.”

Blagojevich said he first learned of the pardon two weeks ago while at home with his wife, Patti. The former governor said President Trump called him and told him what would be happening this present Monday.

Months after his release, Blagojevich filed a federal lawsuit claiming his removal from office by the Illinois Senate following his 2009 impeachment trial was unconstitutional and sought the ability to run for state or local elected office in Illinois.

In 2024, a judge issued a ruling in Blagojevich’s filed lawsuit seeking to overturn the ban on him running for state or local office. The judge’s ruling utilized allusions to Dr. Seuss to underline their message. 

“Read generally Dr. Seuss, Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now! (1972) (‘The time has come. The time has come. The time is now. Just Go. Go. GO! I don’t care how. You can go by foot. You can go by cow. Marvin K. Mooney, will you please go now!’),” U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger wrote. 

Blagojevich and Mr. Trump have worked together in the past. He appeared in Season 3 of the reality competition show “Celebrity Apprentice,” in which he was “fired” by Mr. Trump during the season’s run.

In fact, Blagojevich mentioned Mr. Trump — then not yet president or a presidential candidate — in the hours before reporting to prison in 2012.

“I got fired by Donald Trump,” Blagojevich said at the time. “This thing I’ve got to do now is worse.”

Could Blagojevich be named ambassador to Serbia?

The news of the pardon sets in motion a possible political revival. While Blagojevich remains barred from holding elected office in Illinois after his impeachment from office, there has been word lately he could be named ambassador to Serbia in the new Trump White House.

In 1999, Blagojevich, who has Serbian roots, joined the Rev. Jesse Jackson as Jackson helped broker the release of three American prisoners in Serbia. Blagojevich was a U.S. congressman at the time.

Now, 26 years and a political lifetime later, speculation has been that Blagojevich may be dispatched back to the region of his ancestors by the very man who released him from prison early — as the Rod Blagojevich story takes another unexpected turn.

When asked in the Oval Office whether he was considering Blagojevich for ambassador to Serbia, President Trump said: “No, but I would. He’s now cleaner than anybody in this room.”

Blagojevich declined to comment Monday night on the speculation about the ambassadorship.

The political land mines Blagojevich faced resemble much of Trump’s political career. Patrick Fitzgerald, the former U.S. attorney who prosecuted Blagojevich, represented former FBI Director James Comey, whom President Trump fired from the agency in 2017.

Comey was working in the private sector during the Blagojevich investigation and indictment.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller, who oversaw the investigation into ties between Russia and Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, was FBI director during the investigation into Blagojevich.

What the pardon means for Blagojevich’s electability moving forward remained unclear late Monday.

Blagojevich himself is excited and pleased with the pardon. But other politicians from Illinois do not see it that way.

“I strongly disagree with President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich,” Illinois Senate Republican Leader John Curran (R-Lemont) said in a news release. “Illinois taxpayers have and continue to be burdened with the cost of public corruption, and this pardon sends the wrong message.” 

U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) issued a statement denouncing the pardon: “In a state with more than its fair share of public corruption, the Blagojevich chapter still looms as one of the worst. America and Serbia deserve better.”

Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza also issued a statement, pointing out that Blagojevich was also convicted of trying to shake down Children’s Memorial Hospital — the predecessor to Lurie Children’s Hospital:

“President Trump has the power as president to pardon whomever he wants.

The president can pardon someone as unworthy as Rod Blagojevich, who threatened to hold up funds from a children’s hospital unless the hospital’s CEO donated to his campaign. That was my bill to fund treatment for sick children that Blagojevich held up.   

“Long before it was fashionable to criticize the governor of my own party, I was a lonely voice calling for Blagojevich’s impeachment. I stand by my remarks on the floor of the House during his impeachment after I co-sponsored the bill to launch the impeachment committee against Blagojevich:   

“‘It’s amazingly fitting that Governor Blagojevich face impeachment today of all days on his self-admitted hero Richard Nixon’s birthday. Their common bond of impeachment will unite them in history’s dark annals of corruption. But even Nixon displayed more integrity than Blagojevich by resigning before he was impeached.’

“‘I sponsored House Bill 5331 that would have provided $8 million for specialty care pediatricians in Illinois. Those sick children, Governor, they’re still waiting. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that Governor Blagojevich would have pulled back funds for sick children in order to extort the president of the children’s hospital.’

“A pardon does not erase his crimes from the memory of many Illinoisans whose trust he violated and it never will.”

contributed to this report.