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President Donald Trump is planning on pardoning former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, according to Axios.
The ex-governor served eight years behind bars for trying to sell Barack Obama’s senate seat following the former president’s 2008 election victory. In 2020, Trump commuted Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence.
Following his impeachment and removal from office, Blagojevich appeared on Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice NBC show in 2010, before the beginning of the corruption trial against him. When Trump “fired” him as a contestant, he took the opportunity to praise Blagojevich.
The former governor and Democrat, who was in office between 2003 and 2009, backed Trump in the 2024 election and attended the Republican National Convention. Blagojevich also supported Trump after he was indicted in the New York hush-money case, comparing his own legal problems to Trump’s.
“I love Trump more today than ever!” he wrote on social media at the time.
“When you’ve lived through it yourself, you recognize when they do it to someone else,” he added.
Trump was set to sign the pardon on Monday afternoon, according to a person familiar with the plans speaking on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press.
In addition to being convicted of trying to sell Obama’s senate seat, Blagojevich was also sentenced for attempting to extort a children’s hospital. He was convicted in 2011.
The expected pardon comes weeks after Trump granted clemency on his first day back in the White House to more than 1,500 people charged with crimes in connection to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. People found guilty of violent acts against police officers were released, as were leaders of far-right extremist groups plotting to keep Trump in power despite his 2020 election loss to former President Joe Biden.
Trump has also drawn connections between Blagojevich’s legal issues and his own. Patrick Fitzgerald is the former U.S. attorney who prosecuted Blagojevich. Fitzgerald represented former FBI Director James Comey, who was removed from the post by Trump in 2017. During the investigation into Blagojevich and when the indictment was handed down, Comey was working in the private sector.
Robert Mueller was the FBI director during the Blagojevich probe. As special counsel, Mueller oversaw the investigation into connections between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.
While Blagojevich was convicted on 18 counts, Chicago’s seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out five of the convictions, including counts for offering to appoint someone to a lucrative Senate job.
