Blagojevich is free!

A few days ago I noted that the late Judy Baar Topinka was a one-time opponent to former IL Governor Rod Blagojevich in 2006. While Blagojevich would go down in flames in early 2009 due to his lame attempts at wheeling and dealing over federal wiretaps, we also learn on the flip side that over the years Topinka was a long-time federal informant on corruption in the western Chicago suburbs.

Well I'm noting all this to say, that Blagojevich who was sent to prison eight years ago for his corruption was released from prison yesterday. Released from federal custody by a commutation from President Donald Trump (and lets not forget Blagojevich was a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice) he came home to Chicago the same day.

Then I find this article from Natasha Korecki who follwed the trial and she had this to say:

I’ve written hundreds of stories, blog posts, magazine articles and, finally, a book on Blagojevich’s case. There was one sentiment I heard over and over again, which went something like, “I know Blagojevich was guilty as hell, but 14 years is insane.”

That’s why President Donald Trump likely risks little political blowback by commuting the sentence of his onetime Apprentice contestant, even in the state that Blagojevich disgraced.
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The prosecution long battled public perception of the charges against Blagojevich as overkill — despite a stockpile of secret recordings in which Blagojevich famously said of the Senate seat Obama vacated, “I’ve got this thing and it’s f---ing golden.” Questions always swirled around the criminal case: Wasn’t this just a ham-handed governor, emasculated and rejected by the political establishment, a politically isolated boor, who was talking big on the phone?

Yes, attempting but failing to commit a crime is still a crime, but it’s another thing to convince an average person it’s illegal and punishable, especially in city where standing on someone’s neck for a payoff is a way of life.

This undercurrent of government overreach long bubbled beneath the surface of the Blagojevich case, even though this was a much different era from the one we’re in today. Then, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (who happens to be the personal attorney to his longtime friend James Comey and the special prosecutor in the case against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, whom Trump pardoned) had ascended into an almost God-like figure; at long last, an incorruptible force who had spawned a golden era of public corruption cases.

But even Fitzgerald was second-guessed when, in 2008 — the day the sitting governor was arrested in his jogging suit — Fitzgerald declared “the conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave.” The defense accused him of breaking Justice Department ethics guidelines forbidding extrajudicial comments and possibly tainting a jury pool.

The Blagojevich case provided additional ammunition to critics of law enforcement already screaming about government overreach. The most severe example was Blagojevich’s longtime friend, Chris Kelly. Prosecutors, attempting to turn Kelly into a government witness, brought three separate indictments against him. After prosecutors filed a motion to revoke his bond, Kelly, who battled depression, took his own life. With his dying breath he told his girlfriend: “Tell them they won.”
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All this isn’t to say Illinois loved Blagojevich. Far from it. And the feeling was mutual, as one Blagojevich statement on a recorded phone call illustrated: “I f----ing busted my ass. ... I gave your f---ing baby health care. ... What do I get for that? Only 13 percent of you think I'm doing a good job, so f--- all of you.”
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Even with Trump’s commutation, Blagojevich will have served eight years, a longer term than Ryan’s. (And yes, I’ve long gauged Blagojevich’s time in prison by my son’s age.) It will surprise no one here if Blagojevich almost immediately appears on TV, resuming the role of antihero that he began before he was sent to a federal penal institution.

But now Blago, rejected by the Springfield insiders who left him powerless in the final months of his governorship, has a new political ally, the president of the United States.

Perhaps for the last time on this blog - and I was all over this back then when he got arrested and impeached and removed from IL's governorship - Blagojevich after he leaves federal custody. I'm sorry to say or perhaps not that sorry to say now his cause is our broken criminal justice system which is unfair and racist. I want him to be remorseful as far as what led to his 8 years in custody at least. [VIDEO]

Wait! There's more! George Ryan was the 39th Governor of Illinois and Blagojevich's immediate predecessor who also went to prison for corruption. WGN spoke to Ryan to hear his thoughts on his successors commutation:

“He cut me up pretty good,” former Gov. George Ryan recalled in a phone interview Wednesday with WGN. “That’s okay, it’s over. It’s past and it’s a new chapter in both of our lives and we ought to just move ahead with it.”

Ryan called President Trump’s decision to commute Blagojevich’s sentence after serving a little under 8 years “probably the fair thing to do” and added: “I don’t know that another 5 or 6 years would have made any kind of difference in what he is going to do or isn’t going to do… so it relieves the taxpayers of taking care of him for another 5 or 6 years.”

Yeah, I think I agree with Ryan. Meanwhile now that Blagojevich is home from his sentence, we're going to hear more from him.