Donald Trump Commutes Sentence For Rod Blagojevich, Governor Who Tried To Sell Barack Obama’s Senate Seat

On the same day that he issued a pardon to former San Francisco 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr., Donald Trump also commuted a 14-year-prison sentence for impeached Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, per The New York Times. In 2011 Blagojevich was convicted on 17 corruption charges — including soliciting cash and favors in exchange for the appointment to fill a United States Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama following the 2008 presidential election.

Blagojevich — whose name is pronounced Bleh-GOY-uh-vitch — met Trump while a contestant on the NBC reality competition show Celebrity Apprentice in 2010, the year after he was impeached and removed from office in Illinois, but the year prior to his conviction on the multiple corruption counts.

The first reports that Trump may be considering a commutation of Blagojevich’s sentence surfaced almost two years ago. According to The Times, Trump has now taken action to free the disgraced ex-governor, who remains behind bars at a federal prison in Colorado.

Why Trump was interested in granting clemency for Blagojevich remains unclear.

After the 2008 election, in which then-Senator Obama defeated Republican John McCain, Blagojevich told associates that he considered Obama’s vacated senate seat “golden,” according to a report by The Chicago Sun-Times, saying that the seat was “a f***ing valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.”

According to the Sun-Times report, Blagojevich, a Democrat, also considered simply taking the seat himself, saying that he could “parachute there” from the governor’s office.

The former governor began serving his sentence in 2012. Under federal rules, he would not be eligible for a supervised release program until 2024, about two years short of his full sentence. But his wife of 20 years, Patti Blagojevich, has campaigned for his release in appearances on Fox News, a network Trump is known to watch frequently.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump granted a pardon to DeBartolo, who in 1998 pleaded guilty to failing to report that the governor of Louisiana shook him down for $400,000 in exchange for a casino license. According to The Washington Post reporter Philip Bump, the 49ers owner — under whose management the team won five Super Bowls — agreed to give up control of the NFL franchise, pay $1 million in fines, and serve two years probation.

But DeBartolo never served time in prison, and with his case resolved more than two decades ago, Trump’s reasons for the pardon were also unclear. According to Bump, however, the pardon may have been Trump’s campaign “message” to voters in Mahoning County, Ohio — the region that boasts DeBartolo as a native and local hero, but which was narrowly won by Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election — though Trump emerged victorious statewide.