From Illinois governor to federal prison: Rod Blagojevich tells all in new book

The story about former Governor Rod Blagojevich in 2008, he was caught on an FBI wiretap and then convicted of trying to sell Barack Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat. Then he was impeached and removed from office. Three years later, he was convicted on 17 criminal counts of corruption and sentenced to 14 years in prison. And then President Trump commuted his sentence. That was in the year 2020. And to this day, Blagojevich says he was framed. And now he's telling his side of the story in his new book, Framed, F'd. Let's bleep that in Freed. Thank you so much for sitting down with us to talk about this. Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate that. And yes, framed F'd and freed, and I wrote every effing word in that book. I love that you're saying it, not me. I want to talk to you about that, because when you use the word framed, immediately people want to know who framed you. Corrupt U.S. attorneys, Patrick Fitzgerald. Reid Schar and some corrupt FBI agents who criminalized things that were routine in politics and government, conversations that President-elect Obama began. He didn't do anything wrong. I didn't do anything wrong. They criminalized things that aren't crimes, and this is something that, you know, unfortunately happens all too often. I learned a lot of hard lessons about the criminal justice system, not only that it's broken, and that people can do that to governors, they can even go on and do it to presidents, but that it's also a racist criminal justice system. And one of the places where I My family and I were able to find love and solace during those hard years, those years of storm was actually in the black community, in the black churches, because the black community understands that sometimes the police don't always tell the truth. Well, that's certainly an important part of this story, and I want to touch more on that in a little bit. But some believe that this investigation was, this federal investigation was cut short because other big-name politicians would have been implicated in it. Do you believe that? And what other politicians do you think would have been implicated? Well, I write in my book, in Framed, F'd and Freed, about how the conversations began with President-elect Obama. Again, he didn't do anything wrong. He just wanted to make a political deal. But Governor Pritzker, if he's in the book, he used to work for me back then. He's on the FBI tapes asking me to make him a United States senator. And he said some other things on those tapes, which, you know, if President Trump said those things, Pritzker would have been the first one to call him a racist. It's in the book. I talk about that. Rahm Emanuel is in the book. Rahm's all over the FBI tapes. And if you think that I say the F-word a lot, you ought to hear him. Do you think they should have been charged and put in prison? No, I don't. It was what all of us talked about, Governor Pritzker and I, Rahm Emanuel and I. Hi. President Obama's emissaries and I and everybody else I talked to was perfectly legal and routine in politics. That's why the appellate court eventually reversed the so-called sale of the Senate seat. It was a fake crime from the very beginning. And it's among the reasons why President Trump not only commuted my sentence, but then later on, years later, gave me a full and complete pardon, which incidentally I didn't ask for. He just did it. And as you can imagine, I have a profound and everlasting gratitude to President Trump, largely because he gave my daughters, my little girls, their father back. I didn't see my girls grow up. They were eight years old. My little Andy was eight years old when I left. My daughter Amy was 15 when I left. And when you go through something like that and somebody reaches in and gets you out of that, it isn't so much that he got you out of it, which is great, but the best part was my daughters got their father back. Yeah, you mentioned that being granted that full pardon February 10th, 2025, that happened. What was that time like for you? Cuz that was a long time to be behind bars, 14 years. What did you do during that time? Well, that's a great question. And I hope that people, first of all, I hope people read the book and buy the book. But I hope they read chapter 23, cuz I talk about what it was that got me through it. I ended up doing 2,896 days, not that I was counting. One month short of eight years, it would have been 14 had it not been for President Trump. You know, I learned hard lessons, and I hope people get something out of chapter 23. That's the one where I talk about how my Christian faith gave me the strength I needed to endure, to persevere, to overcome. St. Paul, the first letter to Corinthians, chapter 13, live always in faith, hope, and love. My purpose there in that deep, dark valley wasn't me anymore. It was my little girls who were back at home. I could never give in. I could never give up. I had to endure, persevere, and make it back to them. And then I had to set the right example for them because life is hard. Adversity confronts all of us. And the best way to teach a child how to live is live it yourself. Not so much, you know, preach, but practice what you preach. And for me, using that time, that valley period, in that dark... deep valley to work on constructive things. Read a lot, read the Bible every day, which I never did before, I must confess. I was busy as a politician, you know, going out campaigning, raising money, making promises and kissing babies. But there I was all alone. I write in one of the early chapters about my first night in prison and how shocking that was when the iron gates slammed shut and then suddenly the lights went out and we were swallowed up in darkness. And I realized Not only am I here, But I can't get out, and I have 14 years of this to do, and who's looking after my little girls and my wife? So I reached for the Bible my wife gave me that they allow you to bring into prison, and went right to the 23rd Psalm to find some inspiration and hope, and it began. Twenty-eight hundred ninety-six days of reading the Bible, which gave me a better perspective of what it is that God wants from us, and it certainly gave me the inspiration to keep fighting on. My purpose was my little girls and my wife, and a determination to never give in to the evil and wickedness that was done to me, to my family, and to the people of Illinois, because they hijacked me. And I have to say this, I would say this under oath, I was a great governor for the people of Illinois. I did real things for people. Health care for all of our kids, free public transportation for our seniors and the disabled, mammograms and pap smears for free for 153,000 uninsured women. I refused to raise taxes on the people, even though my party, the Democrat Party, wanted a big tax increase. And I think that's among the reasons why they did what they did to me, was I wouldn't play ball with the establishment. Yeah, I wanted to get to that because all of the House members at the time, except for your sister-in-law, who's a representative, voted to move the charges of impeachment forward. You were unanimously impeached in the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats, including my father, Senator Larry Bumpke, who voted- Is that your dad? It is. No kidding. And now my dad did say that he didn't think you should have gotten 14 years and I think most people will say this was it was an unfair sentence. But do you ultimately feel like you let the people of Illinois down by speaking the way you did on those recordings? No, I mean, I would look, I didn't know that I thought it was possible they could be listening because they've been chasing me for so long. So I felt, you know, I'll talk freely, nothing's criminal here. And they're not going to be corrupting with any ever-twist conversations out of context, which they've done. To this day, 98% of the FBI tapes that they made, they're covering up because it tells the real truth. I was on the verge of making Mike Madigan's daughter the senator in exchange for health care for everybody who didn't have health care in Illinois. A public works bill that would create tens of thousands of jobs and no tax increase on the people. Now, what I would say to your dad, God bless him, is I understand why the lawmakers did what they did. They played snippets of conversations with me saying, this is effing gold, I'm not giving it up for nothing. And the US attorneys went out and made this big press conference, and most of us, including me back then, would have believed them. That was the big shock to me, that some of them can be so corrupt and so dishonest. But what would their motivation be? Why would they do that? Why would they drag you and your family through this? Well, I write in detail about that in the book. They weren't just chasing me, they were chasing Obama in me. It was centered around a guy by the name of Tony Russo. And when Obama's fortunes politically rose, and he looked like he was going to be the first black president in the United States, they realized, whoa, we can't mess with him because that'll create riots in the streets, understandably. So let's scapegoat somebody, we'll get that governor. And Obama and I had a good relationship, again, I was the first governor to endorse him. It began with the both of us, then they settled in on me, I write in detail about that in the book. You know, as the governor of Illinois, everybody wants to be your friend, right? Everybody wants to be your political ally. What happened when those doors closed at the prison? What happened to some of those friends? Well, I mean, what happened to them the day after I got arrested was that you can call anybody the day before when you're the governor and they'll take your call and they're eager to take your call. They're always calling you just what everybody wanted to be the senator because I had the power to make somebody a senator. And then I got arrested on the morning of December 9th. 2008, 6 o'clock in the morning at my home with 24 members of a SWAT team there. I'm a sitting governor. And then, of course, the next day, nobody will take your call. They all ran for the hills, understandably, because they tend to believe these prosecutors, and they felt like they wouldn't do something like this unless there was something really there. But I know... Because of my own experience, and frankly, the appellate court eventually reversed their so-called fake charges on the sale of the Senate seat. It was never a crime. I was right from the very beginning. And if they release those tapes, and I challenge them to join me and release those 98% of the FBI tapes, what the people will see is what they stopped was not a crime spree, which is what they said. They stopped a political deal. Rahm Emanuel was going to be the go-between between me and Mike Madigan to make Madigan's daughter the senator on one condition, that I get those things for the people. Health care for 1.2 million Illinoisans who couldn't afford it. Public works, building schools and highways and hospitals and putting people to work, and no tax increase. It's on the FBI tapes from the night before. They heard that. They came and got me at 6 in the morning. They didn't wait for business hours until 9 or 10 or 11. They had to get me before the day started because they were afraid that deal was going to happen and then they could never make the arrest. Their motivation, their career advancement. They make big names for themselves. They all go on to law firms and become partners making millions of dollars. Anything you would do differently? Based on how everything has played out. Sure, you know what I would do? I would stay the F out of politics. That's what I would do. But you still sound like a politician when you talk about what you've done. I don't think that could have kept you out. I really don't. Yeah, you're running down your highlight reel of what you've done. Understandably, you did do a lot as governor. Would you consider being a politician ever again? I know you're an author now, but would you be a politician again? He can't in the state of Illinois, but federally, would you run for president? Well, thank you for saying that. Hey, you've got to ask the question. I hope you don't make your dad angry with that statement. Thank you for your statement. Look, my wife has made it abundantly clear publicly that if I ever go back in that business, I'd have to do that with my second wife. Now, having said that, look, I have that in me because I was in that business and it's a competitive business and so you feel like when you got cheated in the last fight right you kind of there's a personal end of it part of it that makes you want to go back in but you can never run for an office only because you want to be somebody. It's got to really be something you deeply believe that can be good for the people that you seek to to represent or serve. In my particular case if I ever were to get back at it I would need to have Patty my wife who's been so devoted and so faithful and divide all divide all the odds You know, I was arrested on a Tuesday. And on Thursday, Las Vegas was betting on my marriage, and they were betting 9 to 1 that the first lady of Illinois was going to dump the governor of Illinois. So Patty has gone through a lot. She's defied the odds. Our little girls grew up, and she raised them all by herself, and they're great kids. So it would be very selfish of me to do something like this unless I could get her to approve and sign on to it. And right now, it's sort of like my first primary. It's in my business. It's in my bedroom, and I'm losing. Hey, I want to touch on the criminal justice system because I think that is such an important part of this. What policy needs to change? What would you enact to make it more fair? What needs to happen? That's a great question, Natalie. There's so many things that have to be done. The criminal justice system not only has become weaponized and is being used now as a political tool. Republican prosecutors did this to a Democrat governor. They were chasing me and Obama. Democratic prosecutors tried to do the same thing to President Trump. The Democratic Congress now is very likely, unfortunately, to spend their time not working on affordability or improving the quality of life for people, but to go after Trump, his family, and all the people in his administration. That is not supposed to be how they operate. The rule of law should be sacrosanct. I think we must protect our constitution and We need to reform the system. Among the things would be hold prosecutors who abuse their power accountable. Right now they're unaccountable. The law protects them. It's a broken system. It's a racist system. And I learned a lot by being in prison, being with black guys who were serving double digit years on first time nonviolent offenses, which gave them no chance at a second chance. And I would see the difference between the white guy who did meth from a western state and the black guy from Chicago. Some of the guys, I was their governor, right? The black guy with cocaine is getting twice the amount of time as the white guy with meth. I saw a lot of that in my experience. There needs to be comprehensive reform of the criminal justice system. The sentencing guidelines need to be changed. They need to inject more mercy in the system and go after the real violent, dangerous criminals. Understandably, be difficult, hard on them, protect the public from them. But there's so many people in prison right now who are being treated so unfairly, whether they were wrongfully convicted or whether their sentences are egregiously unmerciful. Depriving them and their families of a new beginning. I wanna talk to you about your party switch here because you did start out as a Democrat, turned to siding with Republicans. What was it, they're rapping me, but I'm gonna get this question in, what was it that made you say, you know what, I'm done with the Democrats? Well, I can go on and on about why the Democratic Party today is not a party that I was in. I don't recognize it. I really truly don't believe most Democrats who are even elected recognize this party has been taken over by the socialists. But I call myself a Trumpocrat. A Democrat for Trump, I haven't given up on the Democrat Party, I'm still technically a Democrat. I take Democratic primary ballots, I voted for some Democrats the other day. But I think I'm like most Americans now. I think this hyper-partisanship on both sides is destroying our country. We need people of good will who are willing to cross-party. Did you vote for Pritzker? You know, he used to work for me and I used to like him. I write about him in the book a lot. I don't like him anymore. He called President Trump twice to actually keep me in prison. And this is a guy who has young children like I have young children. It's one thing to publicly say, oh, don't let him out. I get the politics of that. But to go the extra mile to call a guy that you're always screwing with anyway to keep me in when you called me and asked me to make you a senator and I was nice to you and I even said I'd consider making you the state treasurer, the state comptroller. It's all in the FBI tapes. No, I don't like him. I voted against him. All right. Yeah, I voted for the third party candidate. OK, my follow up was going to be would you support him for president. But I think we got our answer. I'll give you an answer. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Where can we get your book? Look, everywhere- Amazon. You can get on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books A Million and all these other places where people buy books these days. All right. I'll read it. I'll let you know what I think. Thank you so much for coming in to be with us.