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Ex-Gov. Blagojevich released from prison after Trump pardon | National News

CHICAGO (AP) — Rod Blagojevich walked out of prison Tuesday after President Donald Trump cut short the 14-year prison sentence handed to the former Illinois governor for political corruption.

The Republican president said the punishment imposed on the Chicago Democrat and one-time contestant on Trump's reality TV show "Celebrity Apprentice" was excessive.

“So he'll be able to go back home with his family,” Trump told reporters in Washington. “That was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence in my opinion and in the opinion of many others.”

The Chicago Tribune on Tuesday night posted a photo of the gray-haired Blagojevich at Denver International Airport.

Promising he will have more to say in a Wednesday news conference, Blagojevich told WGN-TV he appreciated the president's action.

“I’m profoundly grateful to President Trump and it’s a profound and everlasting gratitude,” Blagojevich said. “He didn’t have to do this, he’s a Republican president and I was a Democratic governor. I’ll have a lot more to say tomorrow.”

Blagojevich wouldn’t say what plans he had for the future, however he did talk a bit about his time in prison.

``I’ve learned a lot about the criminal justice system, how unfair it can be, how unjust it is to people of color,” he said. “I’ve drawn closer to God. There is divine intervention in all of this.”

Blagojevich hails from a state with a long history of pay-to-play schemes. The 63-year-old was convicted in 2011 of crimes that included seeking to sell an appointment to Barack Obama's old Senate seat and trying to shake down a children's hospital.

Trump had said repeatedly in recent years that he was considering taking executive action in Blagojevich's case, only to back away from the idea.

One of Blagojevich lawyers said she refused to believe it at first when word of her client's possible release began to spread, fearing that the president might not follow through.

“When it became obvious it was real, I got tears in my eyes," said Lauren Kaesberg. “It was overwhelming.”

Others in Illinois, including the governor, said setting Blagojevich free was a mistake.

Trump “has abused his pardon power in inexplicable ways to reward his friends and condone corruption, and I deeply believe this pardon sends the wrong message at the wrong time,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a written statement.

Many Republicans agreed.

“In a state where corrupt, machine-style politics is still all too common, it's important that those found guilty serve their prison sentence in its entirety," said the the chairman of the Illinois GOP, Tim Schneider.

The White House cited support from several Illinois-based leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, as supporting Blagojevich's early release. More than 100 of his fellow inmates also sent in letters of support.

Trump made clear that he saw similarities between efforts to investigate his own conduct and those who took down Blagojevich.

“It was a prosecution by the same people — Comey, Fitzpatrick, the same group," Trump said. He was referring to Patrick Fitzgerald, the former U.S. attorney who prosecuted Blagojevich and now represents former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired from the agency in May 2017.

Trump also granted clemency to financier Michael Milken, who served two years in prison in the early 1990s after pleading guilty to violating U.S. securities laws, and pardoned former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who served just over three years for tax fraud and lying to the White House while being interviewed to be Homeland Security secretary.

The Illinois House in January 2009 voted 114-1 to impeach Blagojevich, and the state Senate voted unanimously to remove him, making him the first Illinois governor in history to be removed by lawmakers. He entered prison in March 2012.

More from this section Ex-prosecutor: Someone take away Trump's pardon pen. This is crazy See contents of purse discovered after decades in wall College football player body-slams police officer After exhausting his last appeal in 2018, Blagojevich seemed destined to remain behind bars until his projected 2024 release date. His wife, Patti, went on a media blitz in 2018 to encourage Trump to step in, praising the president and likening the investigation of her husband to special prosecutor Robert Mueller's probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election — a probe Trump long characterized as a “witch hunt.”

At Blagojevich's home, his wife's sister, Deb Mell, emerged onto the porch after a rideshare driver arrived to deliver food. She said the logistics of the former governor's return were not complete and that Patti Blagojevich would not speak to reporters until her husband is home.

“The kids are overjoyed and Patti’s ecstatic,” Mell said.

Blagojevich’s conviction was notable, even in a state where four of the last 10 governors have gone to prison for corruption. Judge James Zagel — who sentenced Blagojevich to the longest prison term yet for an Illinois politician — said when a governor “goes bad, the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured."

After his Dec. 9, 2008, arrest while still governor, Blagojevich became known for his foul-mouthed rants on wiretaps. On the most notorious recording, he gushed about profiting by naming someone to the seat Obama vacated to become president: “I've got this thing and it's f-