Prairie State Wire

Covid researcher Jessica Hockett recently surfaced a letter directed to Gov. J.B. Pritzker from a high ranking Chinese Communist Party leader.

Two letters – one in English and one in Chinese – were sent to Pritzker from Du Jiahao, Communist Party Secretary of Hunan province and Chairman of the Standing Committee of Hunan Provincial People's Congress.

“Did every U.S. governor get a letter of encouragement/offer of support like this from a Chinese official in March 2020, or just the Governor of Illinois?” Hockett, who previously used the screen name Emma Woodhouse, asked on Twitter.

Du Jiahao's letter was delivered in English and Chinese. | Jessica Hockett / Twitter

Hockett added more details on the contact.

“Letters are dated March 13, 2020, but were sent as attachments in an email to the Governor chief of staff on March 16, 2020,” she tweeted. “Reads like a ‘Welcome to the Pandemic’ greeting, doesn't it? Is this a video game?”

Hockett said the letters are problematic.

“If every governor got this letter, it’s a problem,” she posted on Twitter. “If only some governors got this letter, it’s a problem. If only one governor got this letter, it’s a problem.” 

The letter from Jiahao is addressed to "Governor Jay Robert Pritzker" and dated March 13, 2020.

“Recently, we have noticed that Covid-19 cases had emerged in the State of Illinois, and a State of Emergency was declared,” Jiahao's letter reads. “On this special occasion, on behalf of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee, the Provincial People's Government, and the 73 million Hunanese people, I would like to express my condolences and support to you and to friends in Illinois.”

It went on to offer some words of encouragement for Pritzker, and also touted the Chinese government's response to the virus.

“Public health security is a common challenge facing humankind. Under your leadership, Illinois is actively fighting the epidemic. I believe you will be able to overcome this challenge soon and minimize its impact," the letter reads. "Recently, by effectively promoting various prevention and control measures, Hunan has strictly implemented the deployment and requirements of President Xi Jinping and the Chinese government, and has always put the people's lives and health in the first place. The situation here continues to improve, and the recovery of economic and social order is accelerated. Hunan is willing to work together with Illinois by sharing our experience in epidemic prevention and strengthening relevant cooperation, and we will donate a batch of anti-epidemic materials to you.

“In September, 2018, I led a delegation to visit Illinois, Hunan and Illinois have signed a Letter of Intent for Sister Province-State Relationship, and have well collaborated in the fields of agriculture, machinery manufacturing, environmental protection, education and culture. Hopefully with your support, the two sides can strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation in more fields and at a deeper level, and work together for the benefit of both peoples.

“I sincerely wish the State of Illinois an early victory over the epidemic! I wish you and your friends in Illinois good health and good luck! We are with you!”

According to ChinaVitea.com, the 68-year-old Jiahao is a long time member of the Communist Party of China, where he has risen through the ranks. Jiahao has held various leadership positions, including Vice-Governor of Heilongjiang province and Governor of Hunan Province.

A little less than a month after receiving the letter, Pritzker was found to have secretly purchased medical supplies from China.

Reports emerged that Illinois was secretly obtaining personal protective equipment (PPE) and other medical items from China to evade interference from the federal government.  

In the wake of that revelation, the Trump White House issued a sharp rebuke to Pritzker for allegedly spending more than $1.7 million on covert flights to procure medical supplies from China.

Pritzker – who is worth a reported $3.6 billion – also got in on the Covid supply game when his family trust invested in Covid test kit makers, which were mandated by many state governments, including Illinois which required public employees to take the tests twice per week until the fall of 2022.

In May 2020, Illinois Policy noted the Pritzker Group, a family firm associated with the governor, was connected to two companies – PathGroup and Cue Health – engaged in Covid testing.

Despite Pritzker's assertion of distancing himself from the family firm, Tim Schneider, who was Illinois GOP Chair in 2020, urged transparency to prevent possible conflicts of interest related to the governor's public policy decisions.

At the time, Schneider called for the Pritzker trust to dump the ownership interest in those companies, noting the Pritzker family, “controls the companies that are making millions off the pandemic.”

“The complex nature and the extraordinary lack of transparency about the governor's wealth make it impossible for Illinoisans to know whether the governor is making decisions for the best interests of taxpayers or because of his personal financial interests,” Schneider said. “Pritzker must divest and come clean."

Prtizker took no action. 

Hockett, a leading anti-lockdown advocate, is editor of the Substack Woodhouse 76. She holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Virginia.

Her Twitter account was suspended in mid 2022 after she shared content critical of public policies regarding pandemic-response and promoting vaccine hesitancy. At the time, she questioned whether her suspension was influenced by government pressure and expressed concerns about censorship and suppression of dissenting voices on social media platforms.

Months later, the Twitter Files revealed an ongoing conspiracy by the Biden Administration and other members of the Democrat Party to quash dissent by coercing and paying social media companies to remove even truthful content – such as what Hockett was punished for sharing online – that ran counter to government narratives.

Hockett’s Twitter account has since been restored.

Meanwhile the Biden Administration was recently admonished by a federal judge in Louisiana who issued an injunction temporarily preventing White House officials, including some of President Biden's Cabinet members, from working with tech companies to censor Americans like Hockett on social media.

“If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” Louisiana District Judge Terry A. Doughty wrote. "In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the federal government, and particularly the defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.”

That injunction was later overturned by an appeals court that ruled to reinstate the federal government's censorship capability pending a review by a higher court.