I’ve got nothing to hide,” declares Rod Blagojevich. It’s a mild Friday afternoon in October, just over two weeks before the publication of his memoir, Framed, F*cked, and Freed, and the former Illinois governor is coursing with restless energy. His wife of 36 years, Patti, and I are sitting at the bar of the Warbler, a restaurant on Chicago’s North Side. But as Blagojevich talks, he stays on his feet.

“I was a Golden Gloves boxer in the 1970s,” he says, bouncing. “What I liked about politics is that it was like sports — you can compete.” Friendly and insistent, he rarely breaks eye contact during our conversation, except to mash the slice of lemon at the bottom of his Arnold Palmer with a spoon, eat the rind, and ask the bartender for a refill.

The title of Blagojevich’s book is a defiant summation of his attitude toward his past legal woes. “I feel like I got cheated,” he says, finally sitting down. In November 2008, Blago (a nickname given to him by the political press; he hates it) was caught on an FBI wiretap seemingly making plans to profit from Barack Obama’s recently vacated U.S. Senate seat. “I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden,” he says in the most infamous of the recordings. “I’m just not giving it up for fucking nothing.” Blagojevich maintains that he was framed — gaming out possible trade chips, he says, is totally legal. “It’s just good politics,” he tells me.

Jurors did not agree. Blagojevich was convicted on 17 criminal counts of corruption in 2011. He says he got “fucked” by his own government, specifically Michael Madigan, the Speaker of the Illinois house of representatives at the time, who rushed to impeach him. The move ensured that, no matter the outcome of his legal case, Blagojevich could never hold state-level office again.

This remains an especially sore subject because the convictions didn’t all hold up. Then–U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald’s conviction of him for trying to “sell” Obama’s Senate seat was overturned in 2015. Another charge, for........

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