NBC News reports:
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he’d commuted the prison sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was impeached and removed from office in 2009 on corruption charges, and pardoned former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik…
“He served eight years in jail, a long time,” Trump told reporters at Andrews Air Force Base. “I don’t know him very well. I met him a couple of times. He was on for a short while on the Apprentice some years ago. He seems like a very nice person, I don’t know him.”
Trump said “many people” thought the sentence was unfair. “He’ll be able to go back home to his family,” he added.
Blagojevich, a Democrat, has been serving his term at the low-security Federal Correctional Institute in Englewood, Colorado. He’d been a contestant on Trump’s reality TV show “The Celebrity Apprentice” in 2010.
It’s almost too perfect–just a couple of weeks out from under his own presidency-jeopardizing corruption scandal, a period which has been dominated by President Donald Trump’s score-settling against those who testified or otherwise worked against him, Trump has freed the Illinois governor accused of “selling” former President Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat! The best theory we’ve heard as to why this commutation was important to Trump is that Rod Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence after being found guilty of official corruption was making all similarly “transactional” politicos look bad. Graded on Blago’s curve, Trump himself could in all fairness find himself looking at his own stint in the “Club Fed” of FCI Englewood.
This was Sen. Cory Gardner’s takeaway from impeachment, wasn’t it? A little corruption never hurt anybody?
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Blago was pardoned in exchange for hair styling tips.
..and his mastery of the English language. (NSFW)
Released for time served on the Apprentice seems reasonable.
DEMOCRAT. Trump does a bipartisan pardon and still you libs give him no credit.
Yawn. Call me when he starts expunging records of young black men incarcerated for non-violent minor possession of cannabis.
What does this have to do with anythying?
You want us to give him a pat on the back for letting white, white-collar criminals out of jail?
Moddy seems to think that since Blago is a Democrat we all think it's OK. Party over country.
The President didn't say it was ok. He said eight years was enough. This wasn't a violent crime…
So, let's pardon people whose crimes were defrauding the public or consumers. They weren't violent crimes.
Neither are these, dipshit. I get it, you hate weed so incarcerating a colored man is no big deal to you. I mean, all Milken did was bilk a lot of people out of their savings, right?
I always wonder if humans can live without a brain, and I think that can't be. Then Nutlid comes along to show anything is possible.
Didn't you know? Nutlid is a living brain donor.
…whose existence is made possible by the US taxpayer.
Nothing Moddy, because American history is nothing you need to worry yourself about. Tune back into Fox and Friends.
I don't know nutlid. Could you tell us what "anythying" is?
No credit? WTF Fluffy? He’s getting full credit for his embrace of, and his firmly grabbin’ of, lawlessness . . .
. . . as per usual.
Now go back to seeing if you can self-immolate in your tiny Kleenex-abetted fire by friction. (Bet you can.)
Holy shit Moddy, did they send you the REJECTED arguments to make? Cause everyone from Chi to Cairo thinks Blago is a piece of shit that should serve his full term if not more. Guess that was before ya’ll got your marching orders though, huh?
Really scraping the bottom of the barrel to support the orange fucks’ swamp there bub.
Moddy: Our own bargain-basement Chump shill.
Yeah, we give him no credit for abusing the pardon power, fucktard
So…Fluffster? It's OK if your Orange Gangsta offers to pardon J. Assange if he lies about the Russia investigations? All good…? Right?
Isn’t lying just another name for non-violent crime?
Lest we forget: POTUS Obama asked #MoscowMitch to give a joint bipartisan statement regarding the discovery of Russian efforts to undermine our democracy to benefit OD.
#MoscowMitch said Nyet!!
Never forget he refused to inform us.
Never mind the Celebrity Apprentice guy. Check out Paul Pogue, the tax cheat probationer who got his pardon the old fashioned way — payola.
Blago was among the "seven convicted white-collar criminals at the center of federal anti-corruption and tax fraud cases spanning decades" that Trump acted on. WAPO points out the obvious: "The executive actions announced Tuesday fit a pattern of highly personal presidential justice that largely bypasses the traditional pardon process administered by the Justice Department. Most of the people who have received clemency under Trump have been well-connected offenders who had a line into the White House or currency with his political base."
The Unfair Case of the Blago Pro Quo Master . . .
but, definitely, “no Blago pro quo.”
In other Ttump injustice news:
Trump Continues Attack on Federal Case Against Friend
“President Trump threatened to sue “everyone all over the place” involved in the special counsel inquiry and continued public attacks on the case against his associate Roger J. Stone Jr.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/us/politics/trump-tweet-stone.html
(Translation: Roger Stone got yuge, yuge dirt!!)
Blago is just cover for the upcoming Stone pardon. #BadPeopleOnBothSides
Yup. As certain as sunrise.