Former President Donald Trump was found guilty Thursday on 34 felony counts in a hush money case in New York, with the former commander-in-chief receiving support from a former Illinois leader who benefitted from Trump while in office.
In a social media post, Rod Blagojevich, who was the Governor of Illinois from 2003-2009, signaled a show of support for Trump, who had commuted Blagojevich's prison sentence in January 2020.
"I love Trump more today than ever!" Blagojevich said in the post. "When you’ve lived through it yourself you recognize when they do it to someone else. The political fix was in from the beginning. Disgraceful and corrupt convictions of the leading candidate from the opposition party by a handpicked politicized Dem judge who denied a former President a chance to put on a defense and allowed ridiculously unlawful jury instructions. That Dem Judge and those Dem prosecutors ought to go right to F’n jail for what they are doing to our democracy and our country," Blagojevich said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office in January 2009 when he was convicted in a public corruption trial for trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat of Barack Obama, who had just been elected President.
Blagojevich reported to prison in March 2012 after being convicted of 17 different counts, including 10 counts of wire fraud, three counts of bribery and four counts of extortion in July 2011.
The former Illinois governor served nearly eight years of his 14-year federal prison sentence.
In the post, Blagojevich appeared to draw parallels between his own prosecution and Trump's.
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Blagojevich's sentence commutation was far from the first time the former Illinois governor interacted with Trump, as Blagojevich was previously a contestant on season 3 of The Celebrity Apprentice. Blagojevich was fired by Trump in the fourth episode of the season.
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More reactions from local politicians to the historic verdict can be found here.
