President Trump signed a complete forgiveness on Monday for Rod R. Blagojevich, the former Democratic Governor of Illinois who was found guilty of corruption in 2011 in a plan to sell a seat in the Senate canceled by Barack Obama.
“It is my honor to do so,” Trump said in the Oval Office of forgiveness. “I watched it. It has been set up by many bad people, some of the same people I had to face. »»
Mr. Blagojevich, who was governor of Illinois from 2003 to 2009, did not immediately comment.
Pardon was the last opening between the president and the former governor, who is still known in Chicago simply under the name of “Blago”. Only five years ago, Trump committed a 14 -year sentence from Mr. Blagojevich, allowing him to be released from a Colorado prison after eight years and to return to his family home on the north side of Chicago.
“It was a long and long journey,” said Mr. Blagojevich in February 2020, addressing journalists from his gateway as he tried his face several times with a handkerchief. “I am bruised, I am beaten and I am bloody.” (He had cut himself up, unusual with standard razors in prison.)
The former governor then insisted that he had not violated any law and that he was the victim of an overly zealous ministry of justice during the Obama administration. Federal prosecutors said that Mr. Blagojevich’s conduct – trying to benefit from the appointment of a siege to the Senate, among other actions – was so appalling that it “would roll Lincoln in her grave”.
But he found a nice audience in Mr. Trump. While Mr. Blagojevich was waiting for the trial 15 years ago, he called on Trump, appearing on “The Celebrity Apprentice” when Mr. Trump was the host. And Mr. Blagojevich’s wife Patti spoke of Fox News while her husband was in prison, a decision that seemed calculated to attract the attention of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Blagojevich has been the fourth governor of Illinois in recent decades to serve a prison sentence, in a state that has seen his share of corruption charges taken against elected officials from the Chicago municipal council in the State in Springfield.
Michael J. Madigan, the former president of the Illinois House of Representatives, is currently in federal trial in Chicago, faced with accusations of racketeering and corruption. A deliberated jury for nine days so far without verdict.
