DEMS/PARDONS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “A defiant, fresh-out-of-prison Rod Blagojevich heaped praise Wednesday [2-19-20] upon President Donald Trump for his decision to commute the former Illinois governor’s 14-year prison sentence for corruption. ‘I’m returning home today from a long exile, a freed political prisoner,’ Blagojevich said during a news conference outside his home in Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood. The former governor expressed no remorse for the actions that landed him in federal prison for the past eight years and railed against a ‘broken and racist’ criminal justice system. The Democratic governor was impeached and removed from office in 2009 for corruption, and was convicted in 2011 on multiple corruption charges related to his efforts to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated when Barack Obama won the presidency and to shaking down a children’s hospital for campaign contributions.”
-Caitlin Oprysko, “Defiant Blagojevich heaps praise on Trump after commutation,” Politico, February 19, 2020 2:28 pm