Indicted and Running for Office? It Didn’t Begin With Trump.

Indeed, Mr. Trump is hoping to use his legal peril to his political advantage, painting himself as a wrongly accused outsider fighting valiantly against a corrupt status quo. field that included Mr. Trump. In an interview on Friday, Mr. Thomas, a Democrat, said that from his perspective, Mr. Trump seemed to have done very little soul-searching over his myriad transgressions. “The difference with President Trump is he wouldn’t look at himself as being part of the problem,” Mr. Thomas said. Mr. Blagojevich was released after serving eight years of a 14-year sentence after Mr. Trump, as president, granted him clemency.