SPRINGFIELD, IL (Chambana Today) – President Donald Trump recently granted a full pardon to former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on Monday, February 10.
Blagojevich, who was convicted on 18 corruption counts, was pardoned five years after he was sentenced to 14 years in prison on February 2020 in a low-security Colorado facility. During the signing in the Oval Office Monday evening, Trump claimed Blagojevich was “set up by a lot of bad people – some of the same people that I had to deal with.”
Blagojevich served six years as governor before his December 2008 arrest and his impeachment in January 2009. Although his first trial ended in a hung jury on 23 of 24 counts, he was convicted in 2011 on charges of shaking down a children’s hospital executive and a racetrack owner for campaign donations to the attempted Senate seat sale, for which the governor held appointment power.