Former Illinois Democrat Gov. Rod Blagojevich showed appreciation and thanks for the full and unconditional pardon given to him by President Trump, telling Newsmax that it is an “everlasting gratitude.”
“I feel great, you know, [Newsmax host] Greg [Kelly]. I went to bed on Super Bowl Sunday, I was a felon, convicted felon. Woke up this morning, and I'm not anymore,” Blagojevich said.
Blagojevich’s 14-year prison term had been commuted during Trump’s first term but the full pardon was issued on Monday.
Blagojevich had been convicted in 2011 on 18 counts of political corruption for selling an appointment to fill the Senate seat of then-President Barack Obama. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago tossed out five of the convictions in 2015.
“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. 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,” Blagojevich said. “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.”
Blagojevich called his prosecution “political,” adding that he is “trying to figure out exactly what the reason was” for the conviction, saying that “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.”