Lori Lightfoot ethics investigation into political emails dropped

The Chicago Board of Ethics dismissed ethics charges against former Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Monday after the agency found insufficient evidence to prove that she violated the city’s ethics code over a series of campaign emails sent to public employees.

Following a Chicago Public Schools inspector general investigation beginning in early January, the case was referred to the Chicago inspector general’s office, headed by Deborah Witzburg, later that month. Lightfoot’s alleged ethics violation stemmed from emails sent by her deputy campaign manager to teachers asking students to volunteer for her reelection campaign as part of an externship “opportunity.”

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However, the Board of Ethics dismissed the charges against Lightfoot’s campaign after meeting with Lightfoot’s attorney, Michael Dorf, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Dorf said there was “abundant evidence that neither Mayor Lightfoot nor anyone at her campaign intentionally targeted government email addresses for fundraising appeals.”

“The Lightfoot campaign conducted thorough due diligence to ensure that those who subscribed to fundraising solicitations did not use government email addresses. Mayor Lightfoot, like most major candidates involved in large-scale campaigns, was never involved in personally monitoring email list subscribers, or in any other facet of email fundraising,” Dorf said in a statement. “By rejecting the investigation and findings of the Inspector General, the Board has avoided setting a dangerous precedent.”

According to the emails, the campaign said students could work 12 hours per week in exchange for school credit to “help Mayor Lightfoot win this spring” back during the 2023 mayoral election in March. The emails were sent to colleges, universities, Chicago Public Schools, and other schools in the city using publicly available teacher email addresses.

Parents Defending Education filed an ethics complaint against Lightfoot to the Chicago Board of Education, and the Chicago Teachers Union deemed the emails unethical and even threatening. It was initially perceived that there would be retribution if teachers or students refused to volunteer for the campaign.

Witzburg issued a report earlier this year faulting the Lightfoot campaign without naming the former mayor, who has confirmed the investigation involved her campaign.

“OIG obtained political campaign emails sent by the official’s political campaign which demonstrated that the official misused their City title in pursuit of a political purpose, as well as misused the authority of their office and City email addresses for a political purpose,” Witzburg wrote. “The political campaign emails also demonstrated that the official improperly solicited political donations from City employees, over whom the official had supervisory authority.”

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Witzburg sent an email directly to Lightfoot in March 2022, warning the former mayor to cease political communications over public employee email addresses. The inspector general also noted that the Board of Ethics had sent a letter to Lightfoot’s campaign via email and hand-delivered a copy to City Hall. However, despite the warning, Witzburg wrote that her office had accumulated evidence “that this practice has continued at a significant scale for months after BOE’s March 2022 letter, with your campaign continuing to send electioneering emails to city employees at their city email addresses, as well as to sister agencies’ employees.”

The former mayor had called the email distribution a “mistake” at the time and denied having knowledge that emails were sent to public school teachers until she received a media inquiry about the emails. No government funds were used to distribute the emails, Lightfoot said.