President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he had commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich, the former Democratic governor of Illinois convicted of corruption for trying to sell former President Barack Obama's vacated US Senate seat.

Blagojevich, who appeared on Mr Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice" reality television show in 2010 while awaiting trial, had been serving a 14-year sentence after being convicted of wire fraud, extortion and soliciting bribes while governor.

"That was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence," said Mr Trump, a real estate developer who produced the show before running for the Republican presidential nomination.

Within hours, the Chicago Tribune quoted a U.S. Bureau of Prisons statement saying Blagojevich "is no longer in custody" at a federal detention center in Colorado.

Blagojevich, 63, was removed from office in 2009 after prosecutors said he had tried to sell or trade the US Senate seat that Mr Obama vacated after winning the 2008 presidential election.

The Supreme Court in 2018 rejected a bid by Blagojevich to get his sentence reduced. It had been scheduled to run until 2026 - six years from now.