As expected, a slew of political candidates rushed to react to the sentencing of Jason Van Dyke.
And then there was Patti Blagojevich, wife of a now-disgraced and imprisoned Illinois governor.
“I am speechless,” Patti Blagojevich tweeted Friday. “A 17 year old is dead and the sentence is less than half of my husbands sentence for discussions with his staff and attorney about political fundraising.”
It could be another attempt to grab the attention of the last person who apparently can get former Gov. Rod Blagojevich out of jail early: President Donald Trump.
And it comes after Patti Blagojevich last year made some other moves seemingly tailor-made to catch Trump’s eye, with an appearance on Fox News in which she slammed Obama. She also has tried to connect her husband’s case to Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Former FBI Director James Comey — favorite Trump targets.
Van Dyke’s 81-month sentence means the former Chicago police officer will likely serve a little more than three years in prison after shooting the 17-year-old McDonald 16 times in 2014.
Trump himself may have gotten Patti Blagojevich’s hopes up in December, when he tweeted about another TV interview she had done with Fox News, calling her “the wonderful wife” of the imprisoned governor.
Patti retweeted the president, and that was the last tweet she had sent until Friday, more than a month later.
Rod Blagojevich, serving a 14-year sentence on corruption charges, is not due out of prison until May 2024. Though an appellate court tossed five of his convictions in 2015, federal prosecutors say he remains convicted “of the same three charged shakedowns” for which he was first sentenced in 2011.
Those include his attempt to sell then-President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat, to shake down the CEO of Children’s Memorial Hospital for $25,000 in campaign contributions and to hold up a bill to benefit the racetrack industry for $100,000 in campaign contributions.
A jury also convicted Blagojevich of lying to the FBI.
Rod Blagojevich’s attorney, Leonard Goodman, is a member of the investor group that purchased the Chicago Sun-Times in 2017.
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