From Chicago Tribune reporter Jeff Coen: Sorting truth from myth in former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's conviction: 5 things to know:
Flying high above the country on Air Force One late Wednesday, President Donald Trump again teased that he might commute the sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, ending his time in a federal prison in Colorado. Even the possibility of Blagojevich coming back to Chicago more than four years before his sentence was expected to end sent reporters here scrambling for their laptops. Amateur legal experts around the water cooler also were weighing in Thursday about what the fate of the city’s most famous head of hair should be. On Friday evening, Blagojevich’s wife Patti was seen tying a “WELCOME BACK” balloon to a railing outside the family’s home, but declined to say whether it signified her husband’s return.
Here is a rundown of five frequent questions raised about whether Blagojevich should see his sentence commuted and be released from prison:
Was Rod Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence unusually long?
Yes and no. It was longer than most recent public corruption sentences here, but the sentence is within federal guidelines for Blagojevich’s crimes and is actually less than what prosecutors told U.S. District Judge James Zagel they wanted as his punishment, which was 15 to 20 years behind bars. Part of a judge’s job in sentencing is to factor in deterrence to keep others from committing the same offense. The governor immediately preceding Blagojevich was George Ryan, who fell to his own corruption case in the licenses-for-bribes scandal. He was sentenced to six and a half years. The judge noted that apparently was not enough of a deterrent for Blagojevich and other Illinois and Chicago politicians who have followed in Ryan’s footsteps. Some critics, however, pointed out that two years before handing down Blagojevich’s sentence, Zagel sentenced cooperating Chicago Outfit hitman Nicholas Calabrese to 12 years in prison — after he admitted on the witness stand to having a hand in the killings of 14 people.
Did federal prosecutors build a case around ‘only talk’?
This is mostly true. When many politicians get a whiff of federal crime investigators’ interest in their activities, one of the first things their lawyers tell them is to be careful what they say on the phone. You never know who could be listening. Blagojevich seemed to take the opposite track in 2008, when news reports of a federal probe of his administration were swirling around him. Federal investigators captured scores of phone calls he made allegedly plotting to have people shaken down for campaign contributions and attempting to get something for himself in exchange for an appointment to Barack Obama’s Senate seat, which he gave up after being elected president in 2008. The case was in fact built on all of that talking, but prosecutors said in Blagojevich’s case, the talking was the crime. They famously argued that if a police officer pulls you over and then asks you for money to tear up a ticket, it’s a crime for them to ask, even if you say no. It’s an attempt to use government power for personal benefit, which is what Blagojevich was convicted of.
Is it true he never personally pocketed any money?
This is also true. Prosecutors presented no evidence that Blagojevich ever stuffed a mattress with cash from his schemes. His defense lawyers were quick to point out to jurors that no one ever saw Blagojevich scooting around town in a Mercedes Benz bought with giant bribes. But prosecutors did suggest that was partially because the governor’s plans were cut short. One key witness against him was his longtime friend and former chief of staff, Lon Monk. Monk testified that after Blagojevich was elected, the two of them, along with close Blagojevich confidants Antoin “Tony” Rezko and Chris Kelly, agreed that they would use the levers of government inside the Blagojevich administration to make money. The plan, Monk said, was that the money would be kept secret by the group until after Blagojevich left office, and then split among them. It was Rezko (who was convicted in 2008) who at one point dipped into the pot early, and was told to put it back. Other elements of Blagojevich’s alleged self-dealing included trying to get Obama to give him a government post or ambassadorship in exchange for appointing someone Obama wanted to his old Senate seat. That also would have been a thing of value for Blagojevich, the government said, but Obama rebuffed him.
Was Blagojevich really just ‘playing politics,’ as he has claimed?
Blagojevich’s defense lawyers spent much of their time making this argument. Their efforts to convince Judge Zagel to let them “play all the (secretly recorded) tapes” of the governor was on this point: They wanted jurors to hear as many instances as possible where Blagojevich made it sound like he wanted to appoint then-Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to the Senate seat, hoping that Democratic Party leaders would then go through her powerful father, Illinois Speaker Michael Madigan, to push Blagojevich’s platform through Springfield. Blagojevich’s team argued that he was not trying to collect $1.5 million in campaign contributions from supporters of Jesse Jackson Jr., whom Blagojevich was also considering for the seat. As the argument went, Democrats in Washington did not want Jackson, then an Illinois representative in the House, joining the Senate. Blagojevich argued his discussion of Jackson on the tapes was him floating that threat, in his mind boosting the chances for what came to be known as “the Madigan deal.” Prosecutors, however, pointed out that as Blagojevich was running out of string, just before his arrest, he directed his brother and chief fundraiser, Robert Blagojevich, to meet with the Jackson representatives and talk out the campaign contribution. It was at this time that investigators captured Blagojevich on tape urging his brother to be careful with his messaging on the matter and assume “the whole world is listening,” which prosecutors said showed his real intent.
Should he be let out to spend time with his family?
Blagojevich at this point has missed dozens of holidays and birthdays as he sits in prison. His two daughters, Amy and Annie, were in grade school when he was convicted, and Amy, the oldest, has now graduated from Northwestern University. His wife Patti has consistently pointed out this part of the former governor’s pain, and many courtroom observers felt sympathy for the couple’s children whenever they would appear in court. Zagel also considered the impact on Blagojevich’s family when he was sentenced but pointed out that Blagojevich had his family when he committed his crimes, and if anything should have stopped him, it should have been the thought of being separated from his children. But that was not to be the case. "Why did devotion as a father not deter him from engaging in such reckless conduct? ... Now it is too late,” Zagel said at the hearing. “If it’s any consolation to his children, he does not stand convicted of being a bad father.”
Also in the Trib, from columnist John Kass: Column: Mr. President, leave Rod Blagojevich where he belongs -- in prison:
If only Rod Blagojevich had been just another private sector weasel shaking down a children’s hospital — spineless and needy like the hapless Jerry from the “Rick and Morty” cartoons — we wouldn’t even be talking about him.
And though Blago clearly has the personality of a cartoon Jerry, constantly reciting Rudyard Kipling’s “If” during his corruption trial, yukking it up on “The View” and Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice,” letting his wife eat jungle bugs on yet another reality show in a play for cheap sympathy, let’s stipulate to one thing:
The man was once governor of Illinois.
He shook down a children’s hospital. He tried to sell a U.S. Senate seat. He had this thing that was bleeping golden. He’s no victim. The people of Illinois are his victims.
Now he’s in prison, where he belongs, despite President Donald Trump’s hinting that he’d like to spring Blago to revenge himself against former FBI Director James Comey and his friends. It was Trump’s firing of Comey that kicked off that special counsel investigation that bedeviled Trump for more than two years.
If the president of the United States wants to be a cartoon, I can’t stop him.
But Illinois is the most corrupt state in the union, with boss Democrats and Republicans working together against the people in an infamously corrupt bipartisan Combine that has bankrupted the state.
In Washington, it’s called “The Swamp.” In Illinois, it’s the Combine. Each has its media biscuit eaters, and institutional lines of defense, with gatekeepers and spinners running interference and moderates wetting their beaks.
When you were in school, you studied such relationships in biology class. There were the parasites and the host. And now the hosts are fleeing by the tens of thousands each year, in the infamous Illinois Exodus, a race to determine who will be the last taxpayer to turn out the lights.
As we head to 2020 and the elections, it’s clear that constant outrage and constant tears rule our politics now, like the tears from that little girl sobbing for her father, who was nabbed in an ICE illegal immigration raid the other day.
It’s that sort of thing that bothers the Republican White House. And with Democrats using those tears to play on the guilt of white women suburban voters, Trump reaches for his compassion play.
On top of it all, he just hates Comey and, apparently, also Comey’s friend and lawyer Patrick Fitzgerald, the former corruption-busting U.S. attorney in Chicago whose office convicted Blagojevich.
So determined is Trump to vex them while demonstrating his kindness that the other day he teased out that he was “very strongly” considering commuting Blagojevich’s 14-year prison term on corruption charges.
Our former Gov. Dead Meat has served seven years so far.
“I think he was treated unbelievably unfairly. And he’s a Democrat; he’s not a Republican,” the president told reporters. “And we’re thinking about commuting his sentence so he can go back home to his wife and children.
“And a lot of people thought it (the Blagojevich prosecution) was unfair, like a lot of other things. And it was the same gang — the Comey gang and the — all these sleazebags — that did it.”
Bingo.
The Comey gang. Sleazebags. Get it?
That set off a media stampede, until Trump issued a tweet later saying the White House would review the matter. That later tweet had a different tone, a different voice. There was none of the president’s meatiness. Rather, it was the tweet of a lawyer, dry and thin, practiced in the cool art of the skin-back.
Predictably, Illinois Republicans took great umbrage with Trump’s trial balloon, knowing it would cost them in congressional elections. They signed petitions. They made angry statements.
I get it. But I have a bad habit. I remember things.
I remember that when the last politico snared in the Blago investigation was sent to prison — the supreme Republican Combine boss William Cellini — Illinois Republican leaders had little to say.
They shut their mouths. Cellini, boss of the road builders and investor of millions in state pension funds, who made and housebroke a series of governors, was treated with great respect by politicians and journalists who called him “Mr. Cellini.” He was de facto Republican boss for decades.
And the feds taped him saying he just loved “flying under the radar” as he mocked a target of a shakedown. The jury could hear Cellini giggling.
When he went away, not for 14 years but for a baseball season, U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel said “three prominent journalists” had written letters of mercy on Cellini’s behalf. Zagel has never released the names of the journalists.
If Trump foolishly commutes Blagojevich’s sentence, Blago will become a celebrity. He’ll recite “If” right on cue and star in his own cheap redemption saga. His wife and kids will hug him and cry on the morning shows about Trump’s kindness.
But few will mention Chris Kelly, Blago’s friend and fundraiser who was also indicted during that period. Kelly committed suicide in a filthy shack he’d rented behind a lumberyard in the far south suburbs.
I stopped by afterward. The shack was a place of flies. Kelly had a family too.
Illinois corruption isn’t scenery for a Trump campaign stunt. It’s not a movie. It’s not a cartoon, with hapless Jerry Smiths playing the weasel straight man to Rick Sanchez’s merciless sarcasm.
Illinois is a place of political corruption. Taxpayers bear the true cost of it. And they’re leaving in droves.
Leave Blago where he belongs, Mr. President. In prison.
“A lot of people are against it,” a senior administration official told the Chicago Sun-Times on Friday, with one big exception, the source said.
That’s Blagojevich’s main advocate in the White House, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser.
Trump first raised the possibility of giving Blagojevich a break from his 14-year sentence on May 31, 2018, with critics in and out of the White House able to block any action.
Giving Blagojevich a presidential break roared publicly back to life when Trump on Wednesday told reporters on Air Force One, “I’m thinking about commuting his sentence very strongly. I think he was — I think it’s enough: seven years.”
How did Blagojevich’s clemency prospects get resurrected in 2019?
“It was Jared,” I was told.
Kushner has no known personal connections to Blagojevich, though Trump does. Blagojevich got to know the former reality show star when he was a contestant on “Celebrity Apprentice.”
After raising the possibility that Blagojevich could be free right away — on Thursday afternoon a commutation seemed only hours away — by Thursday night Trump suddenly decided to put on the brakes.
Trump said in a tweet, “White House staff” is still reviewing his case.
What happened?
Trump dangling the likely Blagojevich commutation in advance provided opponents in and out of the White House time to act, with the same critics from 2018 quickly resurfacing, including the five Illinois Republicans who serve in the House.
In 2018, the Illinois GOP members — then numbering seven — banded together to ask Trump to keep Blagojevich’s punishment untouched.
The Illinois House members alone were not significant factors in stalling Trump. Their protests were “not going to be compelling enough for Donald Trump. It’s just not. There is always going to be somebody who thinks you should not be doing what you are doing,” the source said.
Moreover — and this argument may have had more impact — “It’s hardly draining the swamp to commute the sentence of someone who was selling his Senate seat and a lot of people are against it, which is how it got knocked down in the first place,” the senior administration official said.
Trump “has gotten pushback about Blagojevich before. He’s going to get it again” with the question put to Trump, “why are you rewarding this guy?”
Kushner, for all his pushing to get a break for Blagojevich, also did not have everything lined up before Trump on Wednesday all but announced the commutation — that is, getting all the paperwork signed off in the White House counsel’s office.
And on Thursday, no one seemed in a hurry as “the normal channels for examining possible pardons and commutation fired back up,” the source said. Even though Blagojevich’s file was submitted to the White House in 2018, it was only “discussed,” and “ultimately not reviewed.”
That slow walking in terms of getting the legal paperwork together — my phrase here — made it relatively easy, I was told, to get Trump to agree to slow things down.
Though the Blagojevich crime is often referred to as the attempted “selling” of the Illinois Senate seat vacated when then Sen. Barack Obama was elected president, there was more to the case.
Blagojevich was also convicted of trying to shake down the CEO of Children’s Memorial Hospital for $25,000 in campaign contributions and threatening to hold up a bill to benefit the racetrack industry for $100,000 in campaign contributions.
But it is also true that Blagojevich never ended up personally profiting from his schemes, a point his attorney, Leonard Goodman, underscored in an interview on Friday.
Goodman, an investor in Sun-Times Media, said, “there is a lot of misinformation going around about Blagojevich. The fact is he never took a bribe, never took a kickback, never took a penny from his campaign fund, never promised anyone anything in exchange for a campaign contribution, period.”
Blagojevich, 62, reported to prison on March 15, 2012. According to the federal Bureau of Prisons, his release date is March 13, 2024, meaning with good conduct time already calculated, Blagojevich is on track to serve 12 years.
Will Blagojevich get a break? I’m told, “it could go either way.”
Connecting the dots
On May 31, 2018, Trump first raised the possibility of clemency for Blagojevich and Martha Stewart while taking questions about a pardon he gave that day to conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza.
There were a few threads tying the three together besides all being high-profile public personalities. Blagojevich was the only one still in prison.
Preet Bharara, who became a Trump critic after the president fired him as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, prosecuted D’Souza.
Stewart was prosecuted by James Comey, who years later Trump would fire as FBI director, the action triggering the Mueller probe.
Blagojevich’s prosecution was done under the direction of Chicago based former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, a longtime Comey friend. The news broke April 24, 2018 — just days before Trump mentioned clemency for Blagojevich — that Fitzgerald had been representing Comey since he was fired.
Why would President Donald Trump think of setting Rod Blagojevich free?
a) Trump has always felt bad about firing the former Illinois governor on “The Apprentice.”
b) Trump can relate. Like Blagojevich, the president is an ethics-adverse puff of artfully arranged hair.
c) Trump wants to change the narrative. This past week was a bad one for the president, what with all kinds of mean people accusing him of being a spiritual accomplice to at least one mass murder, given the way he eggs on haters.
d) Trump has carefully considered the merits of Blagojevich’s case, weighing the seriousness of the former governor’s crimes against the length of his sentence. The president is concerned about proportionality of punishment in our criminal justice system. And he is taking into account any evidence that Blagojevich has grown from his mistakes or expressed contrition.
We’re just kidding on that last one. You know that.
If Donald Trump ever commutes Blagojevich’s sentence, it will be because Trump sees something in it for himself and nothing more.
That’s who Trump is, and that’s the tragedy of it.
Blagojevich sits in a federal prison in Colorado, seven years into a 14-year sentence that we believe is too long, and his chances of getting sprung early depend not at all on the merits of his case.
They depend on the whim of a president who’s perfectly happy to dangle out hope and then whip it away.
Trump is jerking Blagojevich around, and the ex-governor’s family, too.
Blagojevich deserved to be locked up. He had it coming. He tried to sell a vacant Senate seat and extort big campaign donations from a hospital and a racetrack owner. Even in Illinois, those are no-nos.
But we have long argued that Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence was too severe. A more appropriate sentence would have been in line with the 61⁄2 years given former Gov. George Ryan for equally — if not more — serious betrayals of the public trust.
We don’t agree with Trump that Blagojevich’s only crime was to say things “many other politicians say,” but we have always felt he is more ridiculous than venal.
Trump began the week by hinting he might commute Blagojevich’s sentence. Our best guess is that the president thought this might give him rhetorical ammunition in his attacks against the Justice Department, whose supposed “deep state” operatives he despises for pursuing an investigation into his presidential campaign’s ties to Russia.
The federal prosecutors who charged Blagojevich were “sleazebags,” said Trump, who treated the former governor “unbelievably unfairly.” He said “many people” had asked him to commute Blagojevich’s sentence.
By Thursday evening, though, Trump was in retreat. This one wasn’t playing out as expected.
Those “many people” were not to be found, and nobody was cheering him on. On the contrary, elected officials across Illinois were calling on Trump to reconsider. Republicans and Democrats alike, from Winthrop Harbor to Cairo, were of a like mind that Blagojevich should remain right where he is — prison.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat, said Blagojevich had “disgraced his office” and never expressed contrition.
Illinois House Republican leader Jim Durkin said commuting Blagojevich’s sentence would “send a message that if you’re a kind of character and you’ve been turned into a folk hero by the president . . . you have a good shot at not serving your sentence and paying your debt to society.”
By Thursday night, Trump seemed to get it. Setting Blagojevich free would not add to the narrative of a Justice Department out of control. It would add to the narrative of a president who has a soft spot for fellow conmen.
So he backed down. He tweeted that the matter would simply be “reviewed.”
And by Friday morning, the president was back to railing about “racist” Hollywood “elites,” the “failing NYT” and other bugaboos.
Rod Blagojevich doesn’t look to be going anywhere soon.
And given how Trump has completely politicized the commutation process, tainting any decision he might make, the former governor may be going nowhere for a long time.
Which is not right.
Monday morning update:
Update #2, on Thursday, August 15. In a story posted yesterday, CNN says Trump appears to have backed off the idea of commuting Blagojevich's sentence after speaking with a couple of Illinois Republican congressmen. "I wish I had the perspective before," said Donald:
President Donald Trump was on the cusp of commuting former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's sentence late last week, multiple sources said. But then Republican members of Illinois' congressional delegation began flooding the White House with calls.
Patti Blagojevich secures a balloon reading "welcome back" to her porch in Chicago's Ravenswood Manor neighborhood on Friday. No word of Donald Trump commuting the sentence of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich however. pic.twitter.com/9oh0lLCSzQ— Chris Sweda (@chris_sweda) August 10, 2019
From the Sun-Times staff: Patti Blagojevich leaves up 'Welcome Home' balloons even though husband's clemency bid appears stalled
Some of Rod Blagojevich’s neighbors, not to mention a Chicago Tribune photographer, took notice Friday when Patti Blagojevich had “Welcome Home” balloons on her porch in the wake of President Donald Trump’s latest remarks about possibly releasing her husband from prison.
Despite the message on the balloons, it remained unclear Friday night if a grant of clemency for the former governor by Trump was any closer to becoming reality, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times. It also was unclear who put the balloons up: CBS2 Chicago reported Patti Blagojevich found them on the porch and didn’t purchase them.
Blagojevich, however, was spotted on her porch Friday evening with the balloons, an image captured by Chris Sweda of the Chicago Tribune.
The balloons remained on the Blagojevich family porch late Friday night.
Patti Blagojevich hasn’t commented publicly about the latest remarks by Trump, but she’s been her husband’s No. 1 advocate that he’s been treated unfairly.
She talked at length to WBEZ reporter Dave McKinney for a podcast chronicling her husband’s rise and fall, called “Public Official A,” and also reacted to former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke getting a shorter prison sentence than her husband after Van Dyke was convicted of killing Laquan McDonald.
“I am speechless,” Patti Blagojevich tweeted in January after Van Dyke’s 81-month sentence was handed down. Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
“A 17 year old is dead and the sentence is less than half of my husbands sentence for discussions with his staff and attorney about political fundraising,” Patti Blagojevich added in her tweet.
Though an appellate court tossed five of Rod Blagojevich’s convictions in 2015, federal prosecutors say he remains convicted “of the same three charged shakedowns” for which he was first sentenced in 2011.
Those include his attempt to sell then-President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat, to shake down the CEO of Children’s Memorial Hospital for $25,000 in campaign contributions and to hold up a bill to benefit the racetrack industry for $100,000 in campaign contributions. A jury also convicted Blagojevich of lying to the FBI.
After raising the possibility that Blagojevich could be free right away — on Thursday afternoon a commutation seemed hours from coming to fruition — by Thursday night Trump sudddenly decided to put on the brakes.
Trump said in a tweet, “White House staff” is still reviewing the former governor’s case.
From Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet: The inside story on Trump and Blagojevich's stalled bid for clemency: Kushner the key player:
WASHINGTON — On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said he was poised to cut short the sentence of imprisoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but the quick emergence of critics after Trump signaled his move means clemency for now is up in the air.
Despite the message on the balloons, it remained unclear Friday night if a grant of clemency for the former governor by Trump was any closer to becoming reality, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times. It also was unclear who put the balloons up: CBS2 Chicago reported Patti Blagojevich found them on the porch and didn’t purchase them.
Blagojevich, however, was spotted on her porch Friday evening with the balloons, an image captured by Chris Sweda of the Chicago Tribune.
The balloons remained on the Blagojevich family porch late Friday night.
Patti Blagojevich hasn’t commented publicly about the latest remarks by Trump, but she’s been her husband’s No. 1 advocate that he’s been treated unfairly.
She talked at length to WBEZ reporter Dave McKinney for a podcast chronicling her husband’s rise and fall, called “Public Official A,” and also reacted to former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke getting a shorter prison sentence than her husband after Van Dyke was convicted of killing Laquan McDonald.
“I am speechless,” Patti Blagojevich tweeted in January after Van Dyke’s 81-month sentence was handed down. Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
“A 17 year old is dead and the sentence is less than half of my husbands sentence for discussions with his staff and attorney about political fundraising,” Patti Blagojevich added in her tweet.
Though an appellate court tossed five of Rod Blagojevich’s convictions in 2015, federal prosecutors say he remains convicted “of the same three charged shakedowns” for which he was first sentenced in 2011.
Those include his attempt to sell then-President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat, to shake down the CEO of Children’s Memorial Hospital for $25,000 in campaign contributions and to hold up a bill to benefit the racetrack industry for $100,000 in campaign contributions. A jury also convicted Blagojevich of lying to the FBI.
After raising the possibility that Blagojevich could be free right away — on Thursday afternoon a commutation seemed hours from coming to fruition — by Thursday night Trump sudddenly decided to put on the brakes.
Trump said in a tweet, “White House staff” is still reviewing the former governor’s case.
From Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet: The inside story on Trump and Blagojevich's stalled bid for clemency: Kushner the key player:
WASHINGTON — On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said he was poised to cut short the sentence of imprisoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but the quick emergence of critics after Trump signaled his move means clemency for now is up in the air.
That’s Blagojevich’s main advocate in the White House, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser.
Trump first raised the possibility of giving Blagojevich a break from his 14-year sentence on May 31, 2018, with critics in and out of the White House able to block any action.
Giving Blagojevich a presidential break roared publicly back to life when Trump on Wednesday told reporters on Air Force One, “I’m thinking about commuting his sentence very strongly. I think he was — I think it’s enough: seven years.”
How did Blagojevich’s clemency prospects get resurrected in 2019?
“It was Jared,” I was told.
Kushner has no known personal connections to Blagojevich, though Trump does. Blagojevich got to know the former reality show star when he was a contestant on “Celebrity Apprentice.”
After raising the possibility that Blagojevich could be free right away — on Thursday afternoon a commutation seemed only hours away — by Thursday night Trump suddenly decided to put on the brakes.
Trump said in a tweet, “White House staff” is still reviewing his case.
What happened?
Trump dangling the likely Blagojevich commutation in advance provided opponents in and out of the White House time to act, with the same critics from 2018 quickly resurfacing, including the five Illinois Republicans who serve in the House.
In 2018, the Illinois GOP members — then numbering seven — banded together to ask Trump to keep Blagojevich’s punishment untouched.
The Illinois House members alone were not significant factors in stalling Trump. Their protests were “not going to be compelling enough for Donald Trump. It’s just not. There is always going to be somebody who thinks you should not be doing what you are doing,” the source said.
Moreover — and this argument may have had more impact — “It’s hardly draining the swamp to commute the sentence of someone who was selling his Senate seat and a lot of people are against it, which is how it got knocked down in the first place,” the senior administration official said.
Trump “has gotten pushback about Blagojevich before. He’s going to get it again” with the question put to Trump, “why are you rewarding this guy?”
Kushner, for all his pushing to get a break for Blagojevich, also did not have everything lined up before Trump on Wednesday all but announced the commutation — that is, getting all the paperwork signed off in the White House counsel’s office.
And on Thursday, no one seemed in a hurry as “the normal channels for examining possible pardons and commutation fired back up,” the source said. Even though Blagojevich’s file was submitted to the White House in 2018, it was only “discussed,” and “ultimately not reviewed.”
That slow walking in terms of getting the legal paperwork together — my phrase here — made it relatively easy, I was told, to get Trump to agree to slow things down.
Though the Blagojevich crime is often referred to as the attempted “selling” of the Illinois Senate seat vacated when then Sen. Barack Obama was elected president, there was more to the case.
Blagojevich was also convicted of trying to shake down the CEO of Children’s Memorial Hospital for $25,000 in campaign contributions and threatening to hold up a bill to benefit the racetrack industry for $100,000 in campaign contributions.
But it is also true that Blagojevich never ended up personally profiting from his schemes, a point his attorney, Leonard Goodman, underscored in an interview on Friday.
Goodman, an investor in Sun-Times Media, said, “there is a lot of misinformation going around about Blagojevich. The fact is he never took a bribe, never took a kickback, never took a penny from his campaign fund, never promised anyone anything in exchange for a campaign contribution, period.”
Blagojevich, 62, reported to prison on March 15, 2012. According to the federal Bureau of Prisons, his release date is March 13, 2024, meaning with good conduct time already calculated, Blagojevich is on track to serve 12 years.
Will Blagojevich get a break? I’m told, “it could go either way.”
Connecting the dots
On May 31, 2018, Trump first raised the possibility of clemency for Blagojevich and Martha Stewart while taking questions about a pardon he gave that day to conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza.
There were a few threads tying the three together besides all being high-profile public personalities. Blagojevich was the only one still in prison.
Preet Bharara, who became a Trump critic after the president fired him as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, prosecuted D’Souza.
Stewart was prosecuted by James Comey, who years later Trump would fire as FBI director, the action triggering the Mueller probe.
Blagojevich’s prosecution was done under the direction of Chicago based former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, a longtime Comey friend. The news broke April 24, 2018 — just days before Trump mentioned clemency for Blagojevich — that Fitzgerald had been representing Comey since he was fired.
The Sun-Times editorial board gets the last word, at least for now: Regardless of your take on Blagojevich's sentence, what Trump is doing to him is wrong:
a) Trump has always felt bad about firing the former Illinois governor on “The Apprentice.”
b) Trump can relate. Like Blagojevich, the president is an ethics-adverse puff of artfully arranged hair.
c) Trump wants to change the narrative. This past week was a bad one for the president, what with all kinds of mean people accusing him of being a spiritual accomplice to at least one mass murder, given the way he eggs on haters.
d) Trump has carefully considered the merits of Blagojevich’s case, weighing the seriousness of the former governor’s crimes against the length of his sentence. The president is concerned about proportionality of punishment in our criminal justice system. And he is taking into account any evidence that Blagojevich has grown from his mistakes or expressed contrition.
We’re just kidding on that last one. You know that.
If Donald Trump ever commutes Blagojevich’s sentence, it will be because Trump sees something in it for himself and nothing more.
That’s who Trump is, and that’s the tragedy of it.
Blagojevich sits in a federal prison in Colorado, seven years into a 14-year sentence that we believe is too long, and his chances of getting sprung early depend not at all on the merits of his case.
They depend on the whim of a president who’s perfectly happy to dangle out hope and then whip it away.
Trump is jerking Blagojevich around, and the ex-governor’s family, too.
Blagojevich deserved to be locked up. He had it coming. He tried to sell a vacant Senate seat and extort big campaign donations from a hospital and a racetrack owner. Even in Illinois, those are no-nos.
But we have long argued that Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence was too severe. A more appropriate sentence would have been in line with the 61⁄2 years given former Gov. George Ryan for equally — if not more — serious betrayals of the public trust.
We don’t agree with Trump that Blagojevich’s only crime was to say things “many other politicians say,” but we have always felt he is more ridiculous than venal.
Trump began the week by hinting he might commute Blagojevich’s sentence. Our best guess is that the president thought this might give him rhetorical ammunition in his attacks against the Justice Department, whose supposed “deep state” operatives he despises for pursuing an investigation into his presidential campaign’s ties to Russia.
The federal prosecutors who charged Blagojevich were “sleazebags,” said Trump, who treated the former governor “unbelievably unfairly.” He said “many people” had asked him to commute Blagojevich’s sentence.
By Thursday evening, though, Trump was in retreat. This one wasn’t playing out as expected.
Those “many people” were not to be found, and nobody was cheering him on. On the contrary, elected officials across Illinois were calling on Trump to reconsider. Republicans and Democrats alike, from Winthrop Harbor to Cairo, were of a like mind that Blagojevich should remain right where he is — prison.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat, said Blagojevich had “disgraced his office” and never expressed contrition.
Illinois House Republican leader Jim Durkin said commuting Blagojevich’s sentence would “send a message that if you’re a kind of character and you’ve been turned into a folk hero by the president . . . you have a good shot at not serving your sentence and paying your debt to society.”
By Thursday night, Trump seemed to get it. Setting Blagojevich free would not add to the narrative of a Justice Department out of control. It would add to the narrative of a president who has a soft spot for fellow conmen.
So he backed down. He tweeted that the matter would simply be “reviewed.”
And by Friday morning, the president was back to railing about “racist” Hollywood “elites,” the “failing NYT” and other bugaboos.
Rod Blagojevich doesn’t look to be going anywhere soon.
And given how Trump has completely politicized the commutation process, tainting any decision he might make, the former governor may be going nowhere for a long time.
Which is not right.
Monday morning update:
Rod Blagojevich is still in prison — for now. @BrianCassella caught the now-silver-haired former governor out on a shirtless run this weekend on the prison grounds. https://t.co/d6ZoqinWJe pic.twitter.com/YgXGAPfXzB— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) August 12, 2019
Update #2, on Thursday, August 15. In a story posted yesterday, CNN says Trump appears to have backed off the idea of commuting Blagojevich's sentence after speaking with a couple of Illinois Republican congressmen. "I wish I had the perspective before," said Donald:
President Donald Trump was on the cusp of commuting former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's sentence late last week, multiple sources said. But then Republican members of Illinois' congressional delegation began flooding the White House with calls.
Now, Trump appears to have backed off his plans to commute Blagojevich's sentence.
Several Republican lawmakers called acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House counsel Pat Cipollone, the sources told CNN, and the Republican members of Illinois congressional delegation issued a joint statement opposing the move.
At least two of them, Reps. Darin LaHood and Mike Bost, made their case directly to the President on Thursday night, urging him not to go forward. They laid out the litany of crimes Blagojevich committed while in office and argued it would send the wrong message to voters about corruption by public officials.
Trump's response: "I wish I had the perspective before," according to Bost, who served on the Illinois House's impeachment committee to remove Blagojevich from office in 2009.
"Those charges were so outrageously bad," Bost said.
That same evening, LaHood -- a former federal and state prosecutor -- called Trump as well and laid out in detail the brazen charges against Blagojevich, including allegations he threatened to cancel millions in state dollars for a children's hospital if its CEO did not write him a $25,000 campaign check. Among the charges was that Blagojevich attempted to sell former President Barack Obama's Senate seat that he resigned in order to become president.
And Trump was informed on the call that Blagojevich -- whom Trump knew from his role on "Celebrity Apprentice" -- didn't offer any remorse for his crimes, sources said.
"I think this would have real ramifications," said LaHood, who also spoke with Cipollone about the matter. "We're trying to send a message that this type of public corruption is terrible for Illinois." (Read more here.)
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