CHICAGO — Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich won't be coming home to Ravenswood Manor anytime soon, his family's pleas for a pardon or a commutation from President Barack Obama left unanswered.
Blagojevich is serving a 14-year prison sentence after being convicted of corruption, including an attempt to auction off an appointment to the U.S. Senate to replace Obama in 2008 to the highest bidder.
The former governor, 60, is due to be released from prison in 2024.
On his last full day in office, Obama reduced the prison terms of 330 inmates convicted of federal drug crimes, saying they had been sentenced to overly harsh prison terms that would not be imposed under current regulations.
Patti Blagojevich, the former Illinois first lady, said in a Facebook message Thursday that it was "crushing" not to see her husband's name on the list of prisoners set to be released early.
"I'm so disappointed for Rod, and this is so hard on my girls," Patti Blagojevich wrote. "Even though I try to tell them not to get their hopes up, it is still crushing."
Blagojevich's daughters, Amy and Annie, wrote to Obama in November to ask for their father's early release, according to letters posted on Facebook by their mother.
"Maybe he never saw them," Patti Blagojevich wrote.
Annie said it would make her feel safer to have her father back home with her.
"I am 13 years old and he has been gone for so long now that I can barely remember what it was like to have him home," Annie wrote. The former governor was arrested when his youngest daughter was 5, and convicted three years later.
Amy, 20, a student at Northwestern University, asked the president to release her father, and said he had done nothing illegal.
"He just acted like the idiot he can sometimes be," Amy wrote.
In August, Blagojevich's daughters wept when Judge James Zagel declined to reduce the former governor's 14-year sentence. After leaving the courtroom, Amy Blagojevich said the judge "stole my childhood."
During his two terms in the White House, Obama released 568 inmates sentenced to life in prison and commuted the sentences of 1,715 people, including former Humboldt Park resident Oscar Lopez Rivera, who was convicted in connection with a string of 28 bombings and other terrorist acts prosecutors said were designed to overthrow the federal government.
The Blagojevich family could renew their plea for a pardon from President Donald Trump, who got to know the former governor when he appeared on the former reality star's show "Celebrity Apprentice."
The future president fired the former governor for failing to do a good enough job creating an interactive event for a Harry Potter attraction at Universal Studios Orlando.
