Ex-Gov. Blagojevich, freed from prison, returns home

(19 Feb 2020) Rod Blagojevich walked out of prison Tuesday after President Donald Trump cut short the 14-year prison sentence handed to the former Illinois governor for political corruption. He flew from Denver to Chicago, arriving at home early Wednesday morning.

The Republican president said the punishment imposed on the Chicago Democrat and one-time contestant on Trump's reality TV show "Celebrity Apprentice" was excessive.

“So he'll be able to go back home with his family,” Trump told reporters in Washington. “That was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence in my opinion and in the opinion of many others.”

The silver-haired Blagojevich spoke to reporters at Denver International Airport, before he boarded a plane for Chicago. Blagojevich was famously fastidious about his dark hair as governor, but it went all white because hair dyes are banned in prison.

Promising he will have more to say in a Wednesday news conference, Blagojevich told WGN-TV he appreciated the president's action.

“I’m profoundly grateful to President Trump and it’s a profound and everlasting gratitude,” Blagojevich said. “He didn’t have to do this, he’s a Republican president and I was a Democratic governor. I’ll have a lot more to say tomorrow.”

Blagojevich said he hopes to work to fight corruption and unfair sentences in the criminal justice system.

Blagojevich, 63, hails from a state with a long history of pay-to-play schemes. He was convicted in 2011 of crimes that included seeking to sell an appointment to Barack Obama's old Senate seat and trying to shake down a children's hospital.

Trump had said repeatedly in recent years that he was considering taking executive action in Blagojevich's case, only to back away from the idea.

Others in Illinois, including the governor, said setting Blagojevich free was a mistake.

Many Republicans agreed.

“In a state where corrupt, machine-style politics is still all too common, it's important that those found guilty serve their prison sentence in its entirety," said the the chairman of the Illinois GOP, Tim Schneider.

                

Trump also granted clemency to financier Michael Milken, who served two years in prison in the early 1990s after pleading guilty to violating U.S. securities laws, and pardoned former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who served just over three years for tax fraud and lying to the White House while being interviewed to be Homeland Security secretary.

The Illinois House in January 2009 voted 114-1 to impeach Blagojevich, and the state Senate voted unanimously to remove him, making him the first Illinois governor in history to be removed by lawmakers. He entered prison in March 2012.



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