Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich expressed thanks and appreciation toward President Donald Trump for issuing a full and unconditional pardon to clear his name, telling Newsmax on Tuesday it's an "everlasting gratitude."
First Trump commuted Blagojevich's 14-year prison sentence in his first term in office and then on Monday granted the former Democrat governor the pardon.
"I feel great, you know, Greg. I went to bed on Super Bowl Sunday, I was a felon, convicted felon. Woke up this morning, and I'm not anymore," Blagojevich told "Greg Kelly Reports."
Blagojevich was convicted on 18 counts of political corruption in 2011 for selling an appointment to fill then-President Barack Obama's Senate seat. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in 2015 tossed out five of the convictions. Trump commuted his sentence in 2020 after he had served eight years in a federal prison outside Denver.
"And I'm so grateful. It's an everlasting gratitude. I speak for my two daughters and for my wife, but I also speak for the American people, because what they did to me, to a Democrat governor way back when, at the triple-A level, they've been doing to President Trump at the major league level," Blagojevich told Kelly. "And some of the very same people who did it to me felt emboldened that they can get away with it, doing it to a governor, so they decided to try and do it to a president.
"And in a larger sense, it's terrible what they did to President Trump and his family. Me as well. But it's terrible what they are actually capable of doing to 'We the People' and steal from us our right to choose our leaders in elections. You don't like me, vote against me, but don't trump-up fake criminal charges by weaponized corrupt prosecutors who lie and cheat and abuse the system and misuse their power and abuse their power," he added.
To this day, Blagojevich, Illinois' governor from 2003-09, said he's "trying to figure out exactly what the reason was" behind his conviction, calling it "political."
"I think that, you know, when you are somebody like Donald Trump in Washington, or how I tried to be when I was governor, and I believe I was, when you actually take on the establishment, that deep state in Washington, the one in our state capital, and you try to move the money around to actually make it work for people rather than make the people have to work for them, because it's a really entrenched corrupt system in Illinois, they come up and they try to destroy you. And I think that was probably the prime motivator behind me being a target," he said.
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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