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.
The news comes hours after Trump signed an executive order granting a full pardon to former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. related to a decades-old corruption charge.
Blagojevich, 63, was sentenced in 2011 to 14 years in federal prison on corruption charges related to his solicitation of bribes in an attempt to “sell” the Senate seat Barack Obama left open after being elected president.
Kerik was sentenced in 2010 to four years in prison after pleading guilty to eight felony charges, including tax fraud.
Trump, who’s repeatedly floated the idea of pardoning Blagojevich, told reporters that the former Illinois governor had received “a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence.”
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