BREAKING: President Trump is expected to grant clemency to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, two people familiar with the president's plans tell NBCNews.
Blagojevich had received a lengthy sentence"for being stupid and saying things that every other politician, you know, that many other politicians say” and “that he was treated unfairly.”
The remarks were likely a reference to what the then-governor was picked up saying on secret federal wiretaps about his authority to appoint someone to Obama's open Senate seat. Blagojevich has argued he was a victim of federal prosecutors run amok — a claim Trump himself levied at former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election and the president.
“Under the legal arguments that prosecutors used to convict me, all fundraising can be viewed as bribery," the ex-governor wrotewas widely viewed as a personal appeal to Trump for clemency. Democrats — including Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and former Attorney General Eric Holder — have said publicly in the past that they’d support efforts by Trump to commute Blagojevich's sentence.
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