- [Interviewer] Donald Trump becomes president of the United States.

You know, year after year, appeals are exhausted, pretty much, appeals to the Supreme Court are exhausted, and there's really only one person on the planet that can get you out of prison.

Tell me about the strategy.

Why did Patti, or how did it come about that she decided to make that appeal directly to Donald Trump?

- I think the strategy evolved based on the circumstances as they unfolded.

I had been in prison for six and a half years when President Trump took office and President Obama left office.

And we'd asked President Obama if he would cut my sentence in half from 14 years to 7, which would put me higher than anybody.

And then it wouldn't be embarrassing to him politically 'cause he would leave the White House in January.

I would limp out of prison in October.

So it would be separate from a visual standpoint if you're looking at the sort of stagecraft of politics.

And then when President Obama released an FALN terrorist that wanted to blow up federal buildings and then someone who'd been convicted of treason, given a 35-year sentence, it sure looked like my chances were pretty good.

And I was like, I was the only one of 151,000 federal inmates who was actually able to get, as the inmates call it, their paperwork, on the desk of the president.

Because I had a lot of Democratic friends, great person, Jan Schakowsky, congresswoman, Danny Davis, great guy, served in Congress with them, they're good people.

Bobby Rush, Robin Kelly was helpful.

They were urging Obama in a letter and others joined it too to cut me, you know, cut it in half.

And David Axelrod, who worked for Obama and had worked for me, was actually the go-between in actually delivering letters written from my daughters to President Obama, who are the same age as his two beautiful daughters.

And so it looked good and it looked very hopeful and promising, but he didn't do it.

And then Trump came in, and I had known him from "Celebrity Apprentice" and I know all the things he was saying to me during that show long before I imagined he'll ever be president.

And how grateful I was for those things because he was telling me, "You didn't do anything wrong.

This is just politics.

And I really admire, you got a lot of guts how you're fighting back."

Even when he fired me, he said things like that.

He was fantastic.

Most of all, he was really kind to my little girls.

There's a story I can tell maybe at another time about that.

No cameras.

Just shows you the kind of man he is.

He's actually a fundamentally kind person.

And I know your viewers probably don't agree, but they don't know him like I do.

He's a very kind person.

And he's strong and he's tough and all the other.

Having said that, less than a month into his presidency, I'm called into the case manager's office and the White House is asking for my records from prison.

And they can't send it to the White House unless I sign off and agree.

And of course I happily signed, which told me he was, right away, he was looking out for me.

He was checking to see whether there was a way for him to get me out.

And he needed, rightfully, to see whether or not I was a well-behaved inmate and all these other dynamics.

So right from the beginning of his presidency, I had renewed hope.

And one of the things the inmates will tell you if you talk to them and I'm one of 'em, is when you gotta do your time, 'cause that's the object of your experience is to do the time, get through the day.

And once you get through the day, even if you've wasted it, you got through the day.

That's the principle object of your life.

You're one day closer to home.

A better way to do the time is when you have what we call hope time, hope time.

And you break it down.

So you think, okay, got the appeal coming up, and we got a shot, we can win that.

I could be outta here.

Then that doesn't work out, and then there's other options.

And you break your time up.

I was running out of hope time when Obama passed me by, but immediately that hope time was resurrected by the White House's request for my records by the Trump administration.

And that began this process.

And one year later, and I understood the politics too.

I still had some appeals left, like the Supreme Court.

And correctly, the President would wait for the courts to do what they're gonna do.

And they waited.

And then when we exhausted the remedy at the Supreme Court and it looked at, they only take 2% of the cases.

When it looked like they were gonna take the case on a Friday evening, there's a publication that comes out called a Supreme Court something, they cover the cases the Supreme Court handles.

They were predicting they were gonna take my case.

So I went to bed that Friday night, had a lot of hope time that weekend, until I woke up on Monday morning.

And I always heard the bad news from other inmates who heard it on the news rather than from my wife or from my lawyer.

'Cause the information and communication from them is like two, three hours behind.

And so one of the inmates came in to my room and told me, "Just saw it on the news, sorry, Supreme Court didn't take your case."

It was at that point that, in fact, it was that day, that night that Patti was invited on the Tucker Carlson show on Fox News.

And he was sympathetic to the family's ordeal all those years.

And she did great.

And then, and she talked about what happened and how she's recognizing that what they did to me is now being done to President Trump on this fake Russian collusion stuff that was being put out there.

And that was the day, probably April of 2018 on Monday.

And then the second day, this guy I never heard of, didn't know who he was, by the name of Mark Vargas, reached out to Patti, and he said he wants to be helpful.

And, you know, I thought he was a well-meaning guy who had no ability to be helpful.

But he then connected with her, and together, he and Patti and I, me from afar, worked on different approaches to the media about my circumstances.

And Mark suggested that I write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.

It was an election year, warning all the elected officials, be careful about asking for campaign contributions, because they criminalized it in my case.

And I'm in prison for 14 years for fundraising with no quid pro quo.

And the Wall Street Journal published it called practicing, I'm in prison for practicing politics.

Fantastic.

And that was the beginning of a collaboration with Mark and with Patti.

And Patti going on periodically on television where President Trump clearly saw her.

And all through that process, he was trying, trying to get me out earlier than he did.

But he had his own political problems.

And there were some false starts because of the political problems he had.

But he weathered right through.

And I have to say this, look, politics is a rough and tumble business.

It's a business filled up with what kind of people?

Politicians.

And everyday, ordinary people understand politicians for the most part are pretty much selfish, a lot of duplicity, a lot of hypocrisy.

Many of 'em are full of [Beep] to varying degrees.

And they don't do things unless it benefits them.

And in my experience in politics and in government, you know, there's a wide range of people.

You know, it's a spectrum.

Some are kinder than others, some are less kind than others.

And some will actually take political hits to do what's right or help somebody.

And Trump is one of those who will take political pushback and criticism and attacks and put himself in a political position that's not favorable to him to help people.

And I was one of the people that he did that for.

And my relationship with him has always been pretty much a one-way street.

It's been all give on his part and all take on mine.

And my heart's broken to see what they're doing to him and to his family and more so to our country, because I know that what these weaponized prosecutors are doing with the Democrat Party, my party, in conjunction is what the Republican Party under Bush did to me as a Democratic governor.

And they shouldn't be doing this to Democrats or Republicans.

This should not be part of our political process, these prosecutors and the rule of law, it should be sacrosanct and not politicized.

And if this continues, we will no longer be the United States of America.

We will be Russia.

- [Interviewer] Tell me about coming out of prison.

That day.

And I understand you brought some stuff with you you don't wanna leave behind.

- I brought all my books with me, and I was lucky 'cause I was allowed to keep those books.

'Cause generally, there's only so much space in those rooms and you can't keep a lot of stuff.

But I had accumulated a lot of books over those eight years.

Those books were like companions.

They were like my friends, and I didn't wanna leave them back.

I left some and I donated 'em to the prison library.

But a lot of 'em, I brought with me, boxes of 'em.

And I have to say, I did a lot of reading in prison.

Look, it's a bad place to be, but if you wanna catch up on your reading, that's one advantage, right?

But I love my books 'cause they were like my friends, and so I wanted to bring 'em home, and I did.

And I brought boxes of letters I received from people through those eight years, boxes, thousands of letters.

- [Interviewer] What did it feel like?

What was going through your mind when you walked out the door?

- Well, it's happening fast, and we were trying to avoid the media if we could.

I mean, great anticipation to go home and see my children and Patti.

A tremendous amount of gratitude for President Trump, what he did.

Gratitude to Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was very helpful to me.

And to Jan Schakowsky, Congresswoman Schakowsky, Danny Davis, Bobby Rush, and a lot of other people.

You know, it was the first day, it was the first hours of the new beginning that I've been given.

And I'm lucky and blessed, because if those people had their way, I would've still been there for another four and a half years, so, another four years.

So, yeah, it was fantastic and great and liberating, no pun intended.

I felt liberated.