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The documents were posted on a court docket and later taken down It includes list of documents sorted by 'privilege review teams' Trump has fumed about documents FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago Documents include 2016 letter from Dr. Harold Bornstien Several reference pardon discussions Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Marc Kasowitz, Cleta Mitchell mentioned The Justice Department inadvertently disclosed a list of Donald Trump documents being vetted by 'privilege review teams' that were included among thousands of materials seized from Mar-a-Lago. The documents, which Trump's lawyers are trying to keep out of the hands of government investigators, includes discussions about presidential pardons...

Ever since President Trump commuted the sentence of disgraced former governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich, I’ve been asking myself why he would do such a thing. I have a theory about what might have contributed to the decision, and if I’m right, Barack Obama should be concerned. When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, it was then-Governor Blagojevich’s responsibility to appoint someone to fill the seat. But, Blagojevich didn’t just want to give it away, he wanted something for it. “A Senate seat is a f---ing valuable thing. You don’t just give it away for nothing,” Blagojevich said at...

Former Illinois Governor Blagojevich says he was a 'political prisoner'; Matt Finn reports from Chicago. #FoxNews

Convicted political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko has granted his first television interview since he went to prison for corruption. "I was indicted, tried and convicted for a crime I did not commit," he told ABC7's Charles Thomas. "Here I am serving a 10 and a 1/2 year sentence that I believe I do not deserve." Rezko was the wealthiest and most influential member of former governor Rod Blagojevich's inner circle. As he sits in the federal penitentiary in downstate Pekin, Ill., four years after his conviction, Rezko still says he did not do it. At least not the 16 fraud,...

In the run-up to the 2012 election, a story surfaced about an Iraqi billionaire who managed to buy access to Washington policy makers while funding a Chicago Pay-to-Play scheme that helped produce a Governor, a U.S. Senator, and, ultimately, a President of the United States. The story was eight years in the making, yet despite the extent of his political influence, this Iraqi’s name remains widely unknown. He wants it that way. In fact, he has spent millions of dollars to hinder the reporting of his activities by the news media. The lack of attention paid to him, however, is...

How did Barack Obama emerge from Chicago in 2008 untainted by political corruption? His rise to power began at the 2004 Democratic Party Convention when Illinois State Senator Barack Obama was catapulted onto the national stage by the alluring force of his oratory.

A badly burned body found on the floor of a River North parking garage early Tuesday has been identified as a 60-year-old real estate attorney, officials said. Louis S. Cohen, 60, was of the 200 block of Ivy Lane in Highland Park, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. An autopsy Wednesday was pending and did not determine a cause and manner for Cohen’s death, the office said. Just before 6 a.m. Tuesday, police and fire crews responded to a fire in the 11th floor of a parking garage in the 300 block of North LaSalle Drive and found...

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama was quick to blame the bankruptcy of Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers on Republicans’ “failed philosophy”. Obama’s September 15 comments were repeated throughout the media--yet reporters have not noted Obama’s glaring conflict of interest—the Lehman debt owed to a bank owned by the financier who loaned millions of dollars to Tony Rezko.

WASHINGTON — President Trump commuted the 14-year prison sentence of former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, the Democrat who was convicted of trying to essentially sell Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat for personal gain, and pardoned the financier Michael R. Milken and Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, the president announced on Tuesday. “Yes, we commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich,” Mr. Trump told reporters just before boarding Air Force One for a four-day trip to the west coast where he is scheduled to hold three campaign rallies. “He served eight years in jail, a...

The editors of the Washington Post are upset that President Trump pardoned Dinesh D’Souza. They also express concern that Trump might pardon Martha Stewart and Rod Blagojevich. I have no problem with the D’Souza pardon. The Obama administration threw the book at D’Souza for a relatively small campaign finance law offense that, as I understand it, normally results in a slap on the wrist. It did so, in all likelihood, for the same reason the Post is unhappy with the pardon — D’Souza was a strident and effective critic of the Obama administration and of liberalism in general. According to...

President Donald Trump commuted the sentence of former Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the New York Times reported Tuesday.Several Trump administration aides had claimed to ABC that the president is planning to grant the former governor clemency. Trump had previously hinted he was looking into commuting the 14-year sentence, which was originally handed down after Blagojevich was convicted of trying to sell the Senate seat of then-president elect Barack Obama in 2008, according to NBC Chicago. https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1229845536511070209 “Yes, we commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich. he served eight years in jail, a long time. He seems like a very nice person, don’t know him,” Trump...

Trump commuted the remainder of Blagojevich’s 14-year prison term. the Illinois Democrat had begun serving that sentence in 2013 after he was found guilty of attempting to trade the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama for money or favors. The president announced that he had issued pardons to Kerik and DeBartolo. Kerik, who oversaw the NYPD during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, pleaded guilty in 2009 to charges of felony tax fraud and lying to the government. He was released from federal prison in 2013.

His commutation of Blago will confirm that Trump knows all about 3D justice: Diversion-Distraction-Disinformation President Trump will commute former Illinois Governor Rod “Blago” Blagojevich’s prison sentence in time for Blago to be home for Christmas, after 6-plus years in the Federal Correctional Institution at Englewood, Colorado. When it happens, the reaction from the two major newspapers in Chicago is predictable. The Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times, but particularly the “Trib,” will be apoplectic. Hints to that response have surfaced.

The Illinois governor seemed like the ultimate political crook. But some legal experts are not so sure anymore.The day in March 2012 that Rod Blagojevich headed off to federal prison on corruption charges, it seemed to most of us in Illinois, and around the country, that justice had been done. An unsavory, self-absorbed politician all about money and power—the very symbol of everything wrong with politics—was getting what he deserved for what seemed like textbook corruption. But should we have been so certain? Five and a half years into his 14-year sentence, after two trials and multiple appeals, the former...

More than five years into his 14-year sentence on corruption convictions, Rod Blagojevich, who once held the highest office in Illinois, finds himself on cleaning duty at a Colorado federal prison. "I've been given the jurisdiction to sweep and mop two floors," he said in an interview with WMAQ-TV in Chicago from prison released Monday, along with an interview in Chicago magazine. "So my jurisdiction has shrunk from the fifth biggest state in America, to these two floors. But I don't care what anybody says, I believe in clean government, and I believe in clean floors."

Democratic governor candidate J.B. Pritzker Monday pledged if elected to lead Illinois as a resistance state to President Donald Trump's policies and said Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's silence on federal issues demonstrated he was "complicit" with the president. "I'm proud to be part of the resistance," Pritzker told a group of supporters, using downtown's Trump Tower as a backdrop. "When I'm governor, we're not going to be silent like Bruce Rauner. Illinois will be a firewall against Donald Trump's destructive and bigoted agenda." On Monday, Pritzker unveiled plans such as expanded availability of health care and protections for gay rights...

Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich is seeking a presidential commutation, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice. The longshot request comes more than four months after U.S. District Judge James Zagel reinstated the 14-year prison sentence Blagojevich, 60, is serving for a series of schemes that included his attempt to sell then-President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat. The news of Blagojevich’s commutation request also comes days after Blagojevich’s lawyer, Leonard Goodman, filed a brief with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asking for yet another sentencing hearing.

CHICAGO (AP) -- Imprisoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is seeking a presidential commutation of his 14-year sentence on a corruption conviction. U.S. Department of Justice spokeswoman Dena Iverson said Friday the department has received a petition for commutation from Blagojevich. She declined to comment further. The Chicago Democrat was sentenced in 2011 following his conviction for trying to exchange an appointment to President Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat for campaign cash. An appeals court last year struck down five of his 18 convictions and ordered a new sentencing, but a judge this year upheld the 14-year term. This...

A former Chicago transportation official was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison for taking bribes to steer $100 million in red-light camera contracts to a company in Phoenix. U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall sentenced John Bills, 55, in Chicago moments after he apologized for his actions. Federal prosecutors had asked the judge for at least a 10-year prison sentence. The former second-in-command at Chicago's Department of Transportation was convicted in January of bribery, conspiracy and extortion. Bills was accused of accepting envelopes stuffed with cash, along with gifts — including condos in two states and a Mercedes — to...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A lawyer for former media baron Conrad Black urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to overturn his fraud conviction, and several justices asked whether the federal law at issue was too vague. The Canadian-born Black, a member of Britain's House of Lords, has been in prison since March 2008, when he began serving a 6 1/2-year sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice. Attorney Miguel Estrada, representing Black and two ex-colleagues who were found guilty of defrauding shareholders of one-time newspaper publishing giant Hollinger International Inc, argued before the Supreme Court that all convictions in the...