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Trump Tweets Sympathy for Ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich

Trump urged his Twitter followers to watch a recent Fox News interview with Blagojevich’s wife, Patti, and called the situation “very sad.”

President Donald Trump tweeted a note of sympathy on Sunday for Rod Blagojevich, the imprisoned former Illinois Governor and one-time “Celebrity Apprentice” contestant.

Trump urged his Twitter followers to watch a recent Fox News interview with Blagojevich’s wife, Patti, and called the situation “very sad.”

“Required television watching is last weeks @marthamaccallum interview with the wonderful wife of Rod Blagojevich and the @trish_regan interview with a Jerome Corsi,” Trump tweeted. “If that doesn’t tell you something about what has been going on in our Country, nothing will. Very sad!”

Patti Blagojevich appeared on Fox’s “The Story with Martha MacCallum” on Friday to discuss the similarities between the investigation of her husband a decade ago and that of Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee spending.

“It’s a very dirty business, Martha,” she said, “when these prosecutors with their unchecked power and no oversight on them at all can go after whatever politician they want. They say those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and all they have to do is look back at what they did to my husband 10 years ago to see what their doing to President Trump right now.”

This isn’t the first time Patti Blagojevich went on Fox to discuss her husband’s case.

After Trump said in May he was “seriously thinking about” commuting the sentence of Blagojevich, Patti Blagojevich made a public plea for help on the network, which the president has openly said he’s likely to watch.

“I see that the same people that did this to my family, the same people that secretly taped us and twisted the facts and perverted the law that ended up my husband in jail, these same people are trying to do the same thing they did to my husband, just on a much larger scale,” she said. “You know they were emboldened—they took down a governor and now they’ve got their sights much higher.”

On Thursday, an op-ed from Blagojevich titled “Trickery and deceit as legal tools” appeared in The Washington Times.

“For too long, the Department of Justice and the FBI have pursued high profile investigations with virtually unlimited power,” he wrote. “They often intimidate and humiliate subjects and terrorize their family, friends and associates.”

The sentencing of the imprisoned governor, who spent the last seven years at a federal penetentiary in suburban Denver, has long been a controversial subject among politicians across the country, with many, including Trump, arguing that it was too long.

Trump had previously said he believed Blagojevich’s sentence on political corruption charges was “really unfair.”

Blagojevich didn’t make Trump’s list of June actions, including a pardon for Tennessee grandmother Alice Marie Johnson, who was serving a life sentence for drug offenses and backed by reality TV star Kim Kardashian West.

Sunday’s tweet opened another window of hope.

The United States Supreme Court announced earlier this year it would not hear Blagojevich’s appeal. The former governor is in his 7th year of a 14-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in suburban Denver.

It was a devastating blow to Blagojevich, his family, and legal team, who had hoped they would get good news when the court released its order list. Instead, the Blagojevich case merely appeared on the list under the caption “Certiorari denied,” meaning the court would not consider the case.

The President is familiar with Blagojevich, who he famously fired on “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2010. Even though he dismissed the former Illinois governor midway through that season, Trump declared that his famous contestant had “great courage.”

TrumpBlagojevich
The Celebrity Apprentice — Pictured: (l-r) are Rod Blagojevich, Michael Johnson and Donald Trump. (Mitch Haaseth/NBC)

“About President Trump I’ll say this—he’s been nothing but personally kind to me,” Blagojevich told NBC 5 in an exclusive interview last September, recalling that Trump went out of his way to be kind to his daughters.

“He knew these two little girls were going through a very difficult time based on the things being said about their father, and he took a moment to say kind things to them, to encourage them about their father.”

“I’ll never forget that kindness, and I’ll always appreciate it,” he said. “He’s our president now and I hope he succeeds.”

This story originally appeared on Channel 5 News.

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