This week, Rod Blagojevich becomes federal prisoner number 40892-424, reports Politico.
The former Illinois governor is expected on Thursday to arrive at Englewood, a low-security facility in Littleton, Colo., located 15 miles southwest of Denver, to begin serving his 14-year sentence for corruption. Never one to shy away from the media spotlight, Blagojevich plans to make a final public statement in front of the cameras on Wednesday, just hours before he must leave behind his wife, Patti, and two young daughters, Amy, 15, and Anne, 8.
A trip to the big house would be humbling for anyone, but it is a particularly degrading ordeal for a man who until a short while ago dreamed of being president. To find out what Blagojevich can expect inside, Politico talked with ex-pols who served time behind bars about how best the disgraced 55-year-old Chicago native can survive prison.
And nothing will be more difficult than the first day, they said.
Jim Laski - a fellow Chicagoan and ex-city clerk who was known during his one-year sentence as number 18413-424 - recalled his first day as “dehumanizing.” For Blagojevich, he said, it might be worse.
“Someone like Blagojevich who’s been driven around his whole life, he’s had everybody do everything for him, now he’s not Rod Blagojevich anymore,” Laski, who was convicted of corruption and served time at a minimum-security prison in Morgantown, W.Va., told Politico. “He’s just a number,” Politico reports.
Blagojevich said through a publicist that he will speak on Wednesday afternoon outside the home where FBI agents showed up on the morning of December 9, 2008, and arrested him. At the time, a surprised Blagojevich thought the arrest was a joke.
But it was not a joke. Federal agents had spent months wire-tapping Blagojevich's telephones and prosecutors accused him of trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama, in return for political favors and donations.
Three years and two trials later, U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel sentenced the two-term governor and father of two daughters to 14 years in prison for corruption, Reuters said.
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