President Trump has pardoned Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who attempted to sell the Senate seat of former President Barack Obama after he won the presidency in 2008.

“It’s my honor to do it. I’ve watched him,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday in announcing the expected move. “He was set up by a lot of bad people.”

Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat, served as governor from 2003 to 2009. He was impeached and removed on corruption charges related to his solicitation of bribes to try to “sell” the Senate seat that Mr. Obama left open when he was elected president.

Under Illinois law, the governor would appoint someone to the vacant seat, and federal prosecutors alleged that he sought rewards in return.

Upon his conviction, Mr. Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2011.

Mr. Trump commuted Mr. Blagojevich’s prison sentence in 2020, and now he’s taking it a step further.

Their relationship goes back to 2010, when Mr. Blagojevich appeared on Mr. Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice.”

The governor vocally supported Mr. Trump during the 2024 election cycle and attended the Republican National Convention. He defended Mr. Trump amid the multiple legal cases against him.

“I love Trump more today than ever!” he wrote in an X post in May after Mr. Trump was convicted in his New York hush-money case. “When you’ve lived through it yourself you recognize when they do it to someone else. The political fix was in from the beginning.”

He spoke out against Mr. Obama, calling him a “threat to democracy” over the summer and blamed him for former President Biden dropping out of the presidential race.

“It isn’t Donald Trump who is an existential threat to our democracy,” he wrote in an op-ed at the time. “It’s Barack Obama.”

In an X post from last month, Mr. Blagojevich said he wasn’t “eyeing” an ambassadorship, and wasn’t asking Mr. Trump for “anything.”

“I’m profoundly grateful to him for commuting my 14 year prison sentence and giving my daughters their father back,” he wrote. “What I am seeking is justice and for the truth of the corrupt prosecution against me to be exposed. If we are going to save our democracy, lawfare and the weaponization of prosecutors for political purposes must end and those who engage in it must be brought to account.”

Mr. Trump said Monday that while he hadn’t previously thought about Mr. Blagojevich as an ambassador, he “would” now consider it.

• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.