When we last checked in with Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor whose convictions included attempting to sell off Barack Obama’s former Senate seat, he appeared on the cusp of being granted clemency by Donald Trump. The president had signaled in August that he would cut the former Apprentice star’s prison sentence short, telling reporters that Blagojevich had been treated “unbelievably unfairly” by the same feds who, coincidentally, were breathing down the president’s own neck. But as quickly as Trump raised the possibility of a commuted sentence he backed off, apparently bowing to pressure from Illinois Republicans who opposed Blago’s release.

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Now, about four months later, the disgraced former governor is making another appeal to Trump. In an op-ed Wednesday for the conservative, Trump-friendly Newsmax, the Illinois Democrat railed against the president’s impeachment, suggesting—hint, hint—that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have impeached Abraham Lincoln, too. He didn’t mention Trump’s name in the piece, but clearly implied that Trump’s efforts to strong arm Ukraine into investigating one of his political rivals constituted “routine horse trading” that all elected officials engage in from time to time, including Honest Abe, who bypassed Congress to free the slaves and negotiated with the Confederacy to end the Civil War. “Undoubtedly, today’s House Democrats would bring impeachment charges against Lincoln labeling that routine political log rolling an illegal quid pro quo,” wrote Blagojevich, a “Lincoln scholar” according to his wife, Patti. “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.”

The former governor—who was arrested on corruption charges in 2008, impeached and removed from office in 2009, and convicted in 2010—has been serving a 14-year prison sentence in Englewood, Colorado, since 2012. The parallels between his case and Trump’s are uncanny: Two brash, bad-haired politicians caught in the act of abusing their power. The difference, of course, is that Blago was sent to jail, while Trump is almost certain to be protected by his Republican allies in the Senate. Blagojevich is clearly hoping that Trump will see enough of himself in Blagojevich’s plight to grant him a “fucking golden” commutation. Feeding into the president’s paranoid delusions can only help his case.

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