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Ex-Governor Blagojevich Returns to Chicago, Maintains Innocence

Associated Press

   CHICAGO - Rod Blagojevich returned home to Chicago early Wednesday,
   shaking hands and signing autographs after President Donald Trump cut
   short the 14-year prison sentence handed to the former Illinois
   governor for political corruption.

   Blagojevich landed at O'Hare airport hours after walking out of a
   Colorado prison where he served eight years, promising to work for
   judicial and criminal justice reform while maintaining his innocence.

   "I didn't do the things they said I did and they lied on me,"
   Blagojevich, a one-time contestant on Trump's reality TV show
   "Celebrity Apprentice," told WGN-TV as he walked through the airport
   greeting travelers who welcomed him home.

   Blagojevich, 63, hails from a state with a long history of pay-to-play
   schemes. He was convicted in 2011 of crimes that included seeking to
   sell an appointment to Barack Obama's old Senate seat and trying to
   shake down a children's hospital.

   Trump, who announced clemency for 11 people on Tuesday, called
   Blagojevich's punishment excessive.

   "That was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence in my opinion
   and in the opinion of many others," Trump told reporters in Washington.

   Blagojevich told WGN-TV he learned of his commutation when other
   inmates told him they saw it on the news, insisting he "had no inkling
   it was coming."

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