By DOUG E. IBENDAHL • August 12, 2019
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When the bipartisan peanut gallery in Illinois united in record time last week to lecture President Trump on why he shouldn’t commute the sentence of imprisoned former Governor Rod Blagojevich to the 7 years he’s already served, my immediate thought was to that famous line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
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The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
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First of all, forget about the press outlets and editorial boards. We’re all still waiting for them to apologize to America for pushing a Russia collusion crackpot conspiracy theory for nearly 3 years.
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Even the journalists who didn’t directly participate in the obvious hoax won’t call out the many who did. There’s been zero accountability in media for all the time wasted and all of the harm done to this country. To my knowledge, no one has lost their job for pushing a partisan narrative which even the most rudimentary due diligence would have long ago revealed as empirically false.
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An industry which demonstrably has no professional standards doesn’t get to now serve as an arbiter of who does and doesn’t deserve to be a beneficiary of the President’s Article II powers.
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Next!
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Taking a look at the Illinois Democrats who last week publicly opposed the idea of commutation, there is Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot who used the opportunity to slam President Trump again:
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“The president is a person who doesn’t respect the rule of law,” said Lightfoot.
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Seems a little judgy to me, coming from a mayor who had to take a break from enthusiastically working to frustrate the enforcement of federal immigration law.
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Next!
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There was also current Governor J.B. Pritzker who stated: “The former governor is in prison, where he belongs.”
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Nothing you can say about that, beyond: “Are you frickin’ kidding me?!?”
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Next!
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Forget about the Democrats, the most shameless virtue signaling on this matter is coming from Illinois GOP elected officials.
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Recall in May of last year President Trump also floated the idea of commuting Blagojevich’s sentence. GOP officials from Illinois raced to voice their displeasure. They did so again last week when the President revived the idea.
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The remaining GOP congressmen from Illinois jointly issued their opposition again.
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And from state government, Jim Durkin, the alleged leader of what’s left of the Illinois State House Republicans and Bill Brady, the alleged leader of what’s left of the Illinois State Senate Republicans, are also both perturbed at the idea of Blagojevich winning early freedom.
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All of the Illinois politicians against the President’s idea purportedly fear the “green light” it would give to more corruption.
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I hardly think they need to worry. That train has already left the station. Having Blagojevich in prison 3 states away for the last 7 years doesn’t seem to have put a dent in the Illinois culture of corruption.
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Chicago aldermen keep getting indicted, just like they have since Chicago was incorporated. And a Democrat state senator was indicted just this month.
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By all accounts, investigations continue and more Illinois pols are likely to fall in the not too distant future.
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And lest Republicans get too comfortable on their high horse, we only recently learned that Bill Brady acquired a personal financial stake in the gaming industry shortly before a massive expansion in statewide gaming became law earlier this year.
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And last year we also found out that Jim Durkin’s sister-in-law obtained an $80,000-plus engineering job with the Illinois Tollway. Her college degree was in interior design and she was reportedly chosen over 9 other applicants.
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Yeah, certainly looks like some serious deterrence going on.
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I also don’t recall anyone getting upset when former Governor George Ryan was sentenced to only 6 ½ years in prison. He served just over 5 years in prison, and about another 6 months in home confinement. And it’s worth remembering that while he wasn’t charged in their deaths, 6 children did die in a horrible highway crash that was as an indirect result of Ryan’s corruption.
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And good grief, the money laundering, serial child molesting former Speaker of the U.S. House from Illinois, Dennis Hastert, received only a 15-month sentence. He ended up serving about 13 months behind bars.
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Again, I don’t recall a big outcry over that sentence. I think most understood that unfortunately the statute of limitations had run on Hastert’s child molesting crimes and only the related money laundering could be charged.
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It’s a good time to point out that Blagojevich was originally convicted on 18 criminal counts. In 2015, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his conviction on 5 of those counts. Based on that ruling, Blagojevich sought to have his sentenced reduced, but in 2017 the same court upheld the 14-year sentence, basically saying that it could not say as a matter of law that the original sentence was unreasonable for the remaining 13 counts. (That ruling especially had to hurt.)
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I think Illinois GOP officials are in truth mostly motivated by worry that a commutation of Blagojevich’s sentence will somehow hurt Republican election prospects in Illinois next year.
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First of all, the President’s decision won’t be based on politics. Legally it can’t be. Instead, the President is weighing the idea on its merits. Donald Trump personally knows the former governor and his wife, and is familiar with the case. I think the President simply has a good faith belief that the family got an unfair deal and the 14-year sentence is maybe too long under the circumstances.
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I personally absolutely agree with that assessment, and my own very informal and unscientific poll of Illinois friends and acquaintances, of both political parties, finds that not all, but an overwhelming majority of regular working folks would have no problem with commuting the sentence.
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In any case, Republicans like Jim Durkin, Bill Brady and the rest don’t need any help to lose ground to the Democrats in Illinois. They’ve proven time-and-time again they are perfectly capable of doing that on their own. They were doing it long before Donald Trump came on the scene and actually started getting things done.
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The Illinois political class can save their self-righteous lectures. If they really want to be helpful maybe they could give all of us a heads-up the next time Big Gambling, Big Weed or Big Whoever is about to get one of the bills they’ve written fast-tracked into law.
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Granted, then it wouldn’t be inside information anymore. Which is why we’ll never get that heads-up.
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Bottom line, I trust this President’s judgment and instincts. Commuting a prisoner’s sentence is not a pardon. Blagojevich would forever remain a convicted felon. He would never be able to run for public office again and he would almost certainly never be able to practice law again.
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No one is saying Blagojevich didn’t deserve to do some hard time for his crimes. But 7 years strikes me as more than enough.
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And to be honest, I’m really anxious to hear what the man has to say.
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The Illinois Swamp? Probably not so much.
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Doug Ibendahl is a Chicago Attorney and a former General Counsel of the Illinois Republican Party.
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