Trump Pardons Former Illinois Governor Whose Sentence He Had Already Commuted

Donald Trump on Monday pardoned former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, whose 14-year prison sentence for corruption he had already commuted during his first term.

The Republican signed the pardon, calling the former Democratic governor "an excellent person."

Blagojevich was convicted in 2011 on charges that included seeking to profit from filling the seat previously held by Senator Barack Obama and embezzling funds from a children's hospital.

The former governor, who appeared on Trump's television show "The Apprentice," served eight years in prison before Trump commuted his sentence in 2020.

Signing the pardon at the White House, Trump said: "It was set up by bad people. Some of whom I've had to deal with."

When Trump commuted Blagojevich's sentence in 2020, he was under investigation for his ties to the Russian Federation and its interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

Now, he made a point of saying that he saw similarities between the investigation focused on him and the one that brought down Blagojevich.

"It was an investigation by the same people — Comey, Fitzpatrick, the same group," Trump told reporters.

He was referring to Patrick Fitzgerald, the former prosecutor who prosecuted Blagojevich and went on to represent former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired as head of the federal police in May 2017.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller, who led the investigation into Trump's ties to the Russian Federation during the 2016 campaign, was the FBI director when the Blagojevich investigation took place.

Since beginning his second term in the White House, Trump has pardoned more than 1,500 people, all accused in the attack on the federal Congress on January 6, 2021.

These pardons, announced by Trump on his first day, allow those guilty of violent attacks on police officers to leave prison, as well as leaders of far-right groups convicted of a failed conspiracy to keep Trump in power, despite having lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.

A presidential pardon, as a rule, removes the prohibition on exercising certain civil rights, such as voting, serving on a jury, running for office and owning a gun.