>> Donald Trump has commuted the lengthy sentence of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich
further demonstrating his disregard for the rule of law, the justice system and he's just
demonstrating his willingness to really use his executive power to curry favors for his
buddies.
Now Blagojevich was a Democrat, but why do I say that he's one of Donald Trump's buddies?
Well, he had penned an op-ed from prison defending Donald Trump in the impeachment investigation.
So remember, Trump doesn't ever do anything for anyone else.
Everything he does is based on his own self-interest.
So let's talk about his reasoning here.
Now first, he explained his reasoning during chopper talk, but I'm gonna give you some
more insight into his reasoning when we come back from this video.
>> We have commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich.
He served eight years in jail.
It's a long time and I watched his liife on television.
I don't know him very well.
I've met him a couple of times.
He was on for a short while of the apprentice years ago.
Seemed like a very nice person, don't know.
But he served eight years in jail.
There's a long time to go.
Many people disagree with a sentence.
He's a Democrat.
He's not a Republican.
It was a prosecution by the same people, Comey, Fitzpatrick.
The same group, very far from his children.
They're growing older.
They're going to high school now and they rarely get to see their father outside of
an orange uniform.
I saw that and I did can viewed his sentence.
>> Now if you're fooled into thinking that Donald Trump is someone who just wants to
move away from this punitive justice system and wants to be a little more lenient, just
remember the fact that he still wanted to execute the Central Park Five after they were
exonerated from the wrongful conviction that sent them to prison, okay?
After the DNA evidence exonerated them, he still wanted them to be executed.
That's who Donald Trump is.
But he couldn't help himself in that clip, because he mentioned Comey and the prosecutors
behind Blagojevich conviction.
And so all ready you see that even though he was a Democrat, Donald Trump has some political
motive here.
Now let me give you some more detail into what Blagojevich was convicted of.
So he was convicted back in 2011 by a federal jury in Chicago on 17 counts including an
attempt to sell the US senate seat vacated when President Barack Obama was elected in
2008.
>> I mean, that was so bad.
>> It's extremely bad.
>> Who cares was senator ends up being.
>> And understand that usually when a person in a position of power breaks the law, they
are met with leniency.
But what he did was so bad that his sentence was lengthy, right, for someone in a position
of power.
So for instance, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison and has been serving his prison
time at a Colorado federal prison since 2012.
His date for expected release was 2024, factoring in two years of credit for good behavior.
Now, why did Trump decide to commute his sentence?
Now aside from the fact that Comey was behind Blagojevich's conviction, there's also the
fact that there was an op-ed penned by him from prison.
Blagojevich penned a column on Newsmax titled, House Democrats Would Have Impeached Lincoln
amid the now-wrapped congressional impeachment efforts against Trump.
While he didn't mention Trump's name in the column, his wife Patti tagged the president's
name as she retweeted the piece and just to give you a little taste of what the op-ed
said.
No president is safe if a majority of hyperpartisan House members from the opposition party are
willing to abuse the constitution and vote to impeach.
So he is defending Donald Trump from prison.
It's very clear that if you complement Trump enough, he will do favors for you, because
he's this thin skinned like a authoritarian who just wants validation and wants praise
and that's exactly what Blagojevich did in this case.
>> I get what you're saying, but I think like I know we're jaded or whatever.
But I think like he penned the thing, never knowing that that's the guy that eventually
he was going to commute his sentence.
Like isn't it kind of beautiful how the world works out someday?
It's like when Harry Met Sally almost.
It's so weird like it's so self-serving.
Not just that he already has defended Trump obviously in his op-ed, but that Trump wants
the precedent to be that if you can sort of besmirch a person who was involved in investigation
eight years ago, you get off.
Anything involving Comey which is just Trump's inner circle, but also potentially Trump in
the future too, you can totally pardon those people.
We've already set that precedent.
If you're corrupt, I mean, come on.
It's not like you sold drugs or something.
Like you tried to sell ascendancy, that's not a real crime, right?
So that's sort of corruption based prison time.
They're gonna cut all that.
I just love that Trump is still the guy that is supposed to be like he's the one that remembers
like the forgotten people.
No, he's going around like helping the richest best connected people have a jail time for
crimes that don't even make any sense to regular people.
Like put it, make that add.
The idea that he's going around and it was Blagojevich, but it was also like a guy who
was like screwing over investors and all that stuff.
Like this sort of high-level economic could corrupt crime, he's the guys going around
like Santa Claus and make all their dreams come true and you'll get them out of prison.
Get like all their their consequences just magically go away, make that an ad.
>> And remember it's a one, I guess outlier that you can point to is.
Alice Johnson who's sentence was commuted by Donald Trump, but the only reason why that
happened is because you had Kim Kardashian.
Well, Kanye West going around the country praising Trump and then his wife Kim Kardashianwas
the one who was pushing for Ms. Alice's sentence to be commuted.
And so really, are you complimenting Trump enough?
Or are you someone who was really close and friendly with Trump in the past?
And in the case of Blagojevich and the case of Roger Stone, there are political motivations
and implications and it's concerning.
Because look, all of this power is concentrated now in the executive branch.
And the attorney general, William Barr is out there doing Donald Trump's bidding.
And I think it's so incredibly pathetic that all it takes is one interview where William
Barr, his attorney general says something a little negative about Donald Trump's social
media behavior when it comes to these cases.
And everyone's like would you look at that?
My, let's give them all this credit for speaking up against Trump.
No, in my opinion, this was William Barr's way of saying like yo, I'm helping you out,
homeboy.
But you're making me look real bad when you're putting this all out on social media.
So can you just tone it down a little bit?
>> Yeah or even more planned than that.
>> Right.
>> Everybody's talking about the ridiculous connection between us.
I'm gonna criticize you, wink wink, nudge, nudge.
>> Cuz we know.
>> Don't worry about it, though.
>> We know how Trump reacts to people who criticize him within his administration, even
outside of his administration.
Even the smallest critique will set Donald Trump off, but it didn't happen with William
Barr speaking out against Trump in this case.
It is just gross.
And by the way, so just an update on the whole Roger Stone story.
As we know, Trump has been intervening in a number of criminal cases including that
of Michael Flynn that of his long time buddy, Roger Stone.
And so federal judges have been concerned about this and they're actually meeting.
I don't know if they're gonna do anything about it, but there has been fallout after
top officials at the Justice Department retracted their sentencing recommendation of seven to
nine years in prison for Roger Stone.
Stone was found guilty in November of lying to the House Intelligence Committee and obstructing
its investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Roger Stone is this fixture in GOP politics.
He was also found guilty of threatening a potential congressional witness.
So witness tampering is a huge federal crime.
>> He's only 67.
>> He's not a looker.
Prosecutors, by the way, recommended Stone serve seven to nine years in prison.
The Department of Justice overruled them the next day, prompting all four prosecutors to
withdraw from the case.
One of them resigned entirely from the Justice Department.
And so what followed?
A strongly worded letters, no one cares.
Nothing is gonna happen.
And now turns out that a group of federal judges are getting together to discuss this,
but it also unclear what they're gonna do.
So in response, a national association of federal of judges has called an emergency
meeting to address growing concerns about the intervention of Justice Department officials
and president Donald Trump in politically sensitive cases.
Philadelphia US District Court Judge Cynthia Rufe who heads the independent Federal Judges
Association said the group could not wait until its spring conference to weigh in on
a deepening crisis.
Rufe said the group has not decided how it will report the results of its meeting, if
at all.
Then what's the point?
Then what are we doing?
What are we doing?
This man is abusing his power constantly, a two little judges meeting means nothing
if you're not even gonna talk about what you're gonna do publicly or what you discussed during
the meeting publicly.
>> Yeah, so this entire thing from when the seven to nine years was announced to today.
It's just also, I guess the natural evolution, the process we've been going through with
Trump and his relationship with the DOJ and the Southern District of New York and all
that, his hostility to investigations.
It's not surprising, I guess.
But the idea that he's gonna go around and just like his buddies.
He's gonna let them off and anyone who like there's this discussion about like Trump with
the Moller investigation.
How much has been proven here, but the people he's talking about party now.
There's like no question, whatsoever that they broke the law willfully.
They wanted to stop a legitimate investigation.
And so they tried to obstruct it.
There's no question and whatsoever, and he's just letting them off, and we can't even all
agree that that's unacceptable.
>> It's crazy.
>> But this is not sketching out some sort of hypothetical future where law and order
doesn't actually exist and there's no consequences for anything, but we're watching it every
single day and it's just like yeah, hey, look at that.
That's interesting.
Let's just move on to other news.
>> The abuses of power are so obvious and transparent and concerning if you genuinely
believe in our constitution, in American democracy.
Donald Trump is single-handedly dismantling it and William Barr who has been called on
to resign has only helped him cover up his crimes, has only helped assist him in this.
William Barr, himself has been very clear in the past about how he believes our government
should function.
He does not believe in checks and balances.
He doesn't believe in separation of power.
He believes in the concentration of power in the executive branch and he is helping
to make that happen right now in real-time.
So again, look, I'm happy that these federal judges are concerned, but what are you gonna
do about it?
>> Yeah.
>> What is the action here?
Cuz I think that's incredibly relevant.
And to sit back and just let this happen right before our eyes is depressing and makes me
question, where the country is headed in and what does it mean for the 2020 election?
If Donald Trump can brazenly get away with everything that he's been doing, what if he
does lose the election and just decides that he's not going to accept the results?
>> Yeah or maybe that seems too extreme like if you imagine that.
>> I don't think it seem extreme at all.
>> I know, but what if a Republican secretary of state breaks the law to influence the vote?
And let's say we're lucky enough who actually discover it and Trump is part of it, why?
He was trying to be a good patriot.
He's to enthusiastic or whatever.
So we're gonna let him off.
It would be too serious, plus like Comey criticized him on Twitter for doing it like all of these
things are so much less hypothetical now.