'I'm back from the dead': Former Illinois governor jailed for corruption after trying to sell Obama's Senate seat sues for right to run for office again
Blagojevich, pictured above, spent eight years in prison but is suing for his right to run for office again
Convicted former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has announced he is suing his home state for kicking him out of office after his 2008 arrest for corruption and barring him from ever holding elected office.
The former felon who spent eight years in prison is suing for his right to run for office again. ‘I’m back from the dead,’ Blagojevich told reporters outside a Chicago courthouse. The former governor said, however, that he hadn’t even decided if he’d run for office again if his lawsuit succeeded.
‘I haven´t thought about running for office,’ the 64-year-old Democrat said. ‘But I am not going to rule out any options either.’
Blagojevich served eight years of a 14-year prison sentence, which was then commuted by former President Trump. Blagojevich famously tried to sell former President Obama’s vacated Senate seat for cash. He was convicted of 18 felony counts of corruption.
Blagojevich was removed from office in January 2009 after the Illinois House voted 114-1 to impeach him and the Senate voted unanimously to remove him. He is pictured after he was found guilty in 2011
‘I am grateful to him forever,’ Blagojevich said of the former president who spared him years in prison. ‘I’m a Trumpocrat.’
Trump had said at the time Blagojevich was in the wrong, but the punishment was too harsh. ‘He’s been in jail for seven years over a phone call where nothing happens — over a phone call which he shouldn’t have said what he said, but it was braggadocio you would say,’ the former president said in February 2020.
Blagojevich was removed from office in January 2009 after the Illinois House voted 114-1 to impeach him and the Senate voted unanimously to remove him.
In his complaint, Blagojevich said the state legislature impeached him unconstitutionally because he had not been allowed to bring forth witnesses and was denied the right to present potentially exculpatory evidence, including the full wiretap. The complaint seeks a permanent injunction that declares the General Assembly’s actions unconstitutional.
Blagojevich is representing himself as a non-lawyer in the case - he’s been stripped of his law license and even told reporters he’d received a C in constitutional law at law school.
‘I am grateful to him forever,’ Blagojevich, pictured above on the day of his release from prison, said after President Trump commuted his sentence
Once a rising star in the Democratic Party, Blagojevich was widely popular in his state, and voters were shocked when his corruption was unveiled, though Illinois has a history of elected officials facing similar indictments.
An indignant Blagojevich on Monday said the case against him was a ‘travesty of justice.’ ‘It sucks,’ he added.