BLAGOJEVICH warns: Trump Next in Line After Me

Editor’s note: In 2011, a jury found Rod Blagojevich guilty of 18 counts of corruption for actions during his time as governor of Illinois, including that he tried to leverage his authority over who would replace Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate. The Illinois Democrat was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison, but the sentence was commuted by former President Donald Trump in February 2020. Trump, who had Blagojevich on “Celebrity Apprentice” after he was arrested and impeached, said that Blagojevich received a “ridiculous sentence.” Afterwards, Blagojevich declared himself a “Trumpocrat.”

—

If it weren’t for Donald J. Trump, today — May 23, 2024 — would be the day I finally would be coming home. Four years ago, President Trump commuted my 14-year prison sentence after I spent eight years there for the non-existent crimes of practicing politics.

I broke no laws.

It was all political talk, initiated by an emissary sent to me by then-President-elect Barack Obama. None of us broke any laws. It was politics, nothing more than political horse-trading. But as Obama went on to serve eight years in the White House, I went on to serve eight years in the Big House.

In my case, dishonest prosecutors weaponized unfettered power to criminalize the routine and necessary political practices of horse-trading and fundraising, concocting them into bogus charges in a sham indictment. They succeeded in ejecting a twice-elected governor from office, undoing an election, and framing an innocent man. They did this out in the open, in the full glare of the media, and they got away with it.

Because of their success against me, they grew bolder.

“If we could do this to a Governor,” they reasoned, “why not try it on a President?”

Enter Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, and Letitia James.

Partisan prosecutions and lawsuits for invented crimes, politicized courts with politically appointed judges, rigged trials where novel legal theory is used as the basis for shameful indictments, and a news media with its own political agenda pushing false narratives instead of objectively seeking the truth.

What they’ve been doing is no small thing. It is an issue far greater than a Democrat governor or a Republican president. This issue goes to the very heart of Constitutional government and the right of the people to participate freely in fair elections.

We are facing the greatest constitutional crisis in our history since the Civil War. The politics of prosecution, persecution, and political destruction have replaced what Lincoln described as “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

The use of criminal prosecutions and partisan courts to interfere with the political process is Soviet-style KGB politics. It’s the politics of the police state, not the politics of what Lincoln fought to preserve. Those who would abuse the justice system by using it not to dispense justice but instead to use as a political tool are traitors to our constitution and to our country. This is treason. It is the abuse of the power of the justice system and the courts to overthrow the people’s right to self-government.

As the former Democrat Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer warned only a few short years ago, “These uncontrolled criminal prosecutors are a threat to our separation of powers.”

Former FBI Director James Comey, Former US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, Robert Mueller, Bragg, Willis, and Smith have become political power players abusing prosecutorial power to interfere in active elections and serve their partisan political objectives. There is no practical check and balance against them. They can do whatever they want to whomever they want because they lack any accountability.

It’s a shame our nation’s politics are so divided. In this era of hyper-partisanship, too many people put their hatred for the other side above their love of country.

I was a Democrat governor persecuted by Bush-appointed Republican prosecutors. Trump is the Republican nominee for president being persecuted by political allies of President Biden. The cancer of the politics of prosecution spreads to both parties, but what Democrat prosecutors and Democrat courts are now doing to Trump during a presidential campaign is a breathtaking abuse of the justice system akin to what we see in totalitarian dictatorships.

I urge the American people to wake up, speak out, and vote. The stakes couldn’t be higher. We must look past the political labels. These politically motivated prosecutors are leading us down the inevitable slippery slope of payback when the party out of power takes power only to do unto others what was just done to them.

On this day when I would otherwise be returning home, I want to once again thank President Trump for his kindness to me and my family. Better than giving me my freedom back, he gave my young daughters their father back.

I hate what they are doing to him, and I hate what they are doing to the rule of law, our Constitution, our democracy, and our country.

***

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.