Prairie State Wire

The people of Illinois need a new lawyer who will zealously enforce our laws in the streets and suites — including in government suites.

We need a lawyer who will pursue and, when circumstances warrant, prosecute elected officials who swore to serve, but instead used their position and power to protect cronies and bully ordinary people.

JB Pritzker is a blustering, bluffing bully, who to this very day continues to assert unchecked power to rule over Illinois. He continues to assert that Illinois is a “disaster area” and that he has vast, unchecked power to rule nearly every aspect of people’s lives.

This is as preposterous as it sounds. We live in constitutional Republic — no one person has the powers he claims.

Indeed, under the Illinois Constitution “the Attorney General shall be the legal officer of the State.”  The Attorney General has the sole duty, a sworn duty, to represent the People of Illinois, their Constitution and their duly enacted laws.

Yet, today our Attorney General serves only as wingman to machine pols and as lapdog to the bluffing billionaire bully who is financing his political campaign.

Kwame Raoul has never once stood up to his paymaster — he’s bought and paid for — he sells you out to fight for the bluffing bully himself. 

Where is Kwame on Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx? Is he holding her to account for violating her oath of office? She has a duty to enforce the law — is she? She isn’t hiding who she is and what she’s doing. But no one does a darn thing about it.

Who looks out for you, when powerful people like Kim Foxx and JB Pritzker ignore their sworn duty to protect you and uphold our constitution and laws?

Can we be honest? Kim Foxx is a social justice warrior. She ran for State’s Attorney to protect predators not to prosecute them. And that’s exactly what she’s done.

In one of her first acts in office she decreed that she was changing the definition of felony retail theft. https://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/tribune/article_popover.aspx?guid=9ac9f3b1-0978-4ba4-a81b-bca34e82a2fa

She was elected to enforce the law, not to make it up. Yet no one, not even the Attorney General, stepped in to hold her to account.

And we all know too well about how Governor Pritzker asserted unilateral power, and then abused it over and over, causing unquantifiable harm to small businesses, as well as a generation of children, again without a peep of protest from the quisling Kwame.

Like many of you, I was stunned at how swiftly due process and the rule of law were abandoned in the pandemic. The powerful stoked fear to grab even more power. They didn’t serve you; they aggrandized their billionaire boss. And sadly, they ignored their duty to the most vulnerable in their care, at one time leaving 32 to die from their neglect of office. https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-lasalle-veterans-home-audit-report-20220505-aihlqlow7nd5rnp7f4tr445n7u-story.html

As businesses and children continued to suffer, I looked around to see who would do something about Pritzker’s abuse of power and discovered this — too many lawyers care more about money and their reputations than they do about people and principle.

I spoke to partners in big law firms with strong reputations as experts in the scope of government power. Every single lawyer I spoke to acknowledged the illegality of Pritzker’s big legal bluff, but none of them would step up, stand up and call him out. 

Instead, each of them found a reason to go along and get along — and pretend Pritzker had power they knew he did not have.

Except me. I took on the bluffing billionaire bully and I won far more cases than I lost.  We saved hundreds upon hundreds of small businesses from financial destruction and brought parental choice back to their children’s health.  The complicit media only tells you of the losses to control the narrative that suits the political elites who write their paychecks. I fought for you, and I am not done fighting for you, which is the only reason I am running for this office.

It’s true I didn’t grow up with privilege and go to law school in Chicago — I am a first-generation college student, who worked my way through law school later in my 30’s. I had to overcome poverty, painful injuries and worked around the clock, asking my family to make sacrifices, to become a lawyer. https://www.bnd.com/news/rebuild/article242704076.html.

I am not a fancy wall street attorney. My only privilege in life has been that I am a proud American from the Land of Lincoln who was given nothing in life but the opportunities this great nation provides. Unlike the current Attorney General, I have no interest in specializing in finding ways to bend laws and abandon principles to appease a billionaire Governor to promote my own political ambitions.  I like to believe I’m painfully honest and vocal even when a path of obfuscation and silence might be easier. 

Sometimes I am even blunt, and I still doggedly believe that is sometimes necessary when protecting the liberties and freedoms in which our nation was conceived.

I am dedicated to the proposition that all people — the poor and powerful, the penniless and the Pritzker’s — are created equal in spite of socio-economic differences.   The man who owns the business is no more or less valuable to society than the man who sweeps the floors. 

It’s who I am. I am not a sneak and I am not weak — I am just man, like millions of others, who grew up in the life of hard knocks who is for truth, justice, domestic tranquility and respect for each other, which is the American way.  It is far past time the “little guy” has a say in how this state operates who ensures everyone has a fair shot at living the American dream. 

The only thing up my sleeve is Liberty, Freedom and our flag — literally.

So, I get that an honest, sometimes blunt, lawyer who’s not a quisling may seem a bit foreign to some. I am not Kim Foxx’s or JB Pritzker’s wingman, but I will be the people’s lawyer — just as I have already been trying to be the last two years.

And to the people of Cook County, let me promise you this: I will use the power you vest in me to assure Kim Foxx faithfully discharges the duties of her office.  She will start doing her job or together we will run her out of office.   

Imagine a city and a state in which a “nobody that the nobodies sent” fights and wins for you instead of the rich and political elite.

Thomas G. DeVore

Candidate for Attorney General