Tag: chicago

Mayor Johnson takes campaign cash from lawyer whose firm has pending lawsuits against City Hall

Chicago lawyer Antonio Romanucci has become one of the better-known civil rights and personal injury attorneys, known for handling high-profile lawsuits, including one that led to a $27 million settlement for the family of George Floyd after his 2020 murder by a Minneapolis cop.

Locally, his Loop law firm Romanucci & Blandin, LLC, represents clients in nine pending lawsuits against City Hall, with one of those cases involving allegations that Chicago cops framed a South Side man for the 1988 murder of a little boy. Two other lawsuits involving the firm have been settled by City Hall since Mayor Brandon Johnson took office in May 2023.

Even though Johnson’s Law Department holds huge sway over such legal cases — often helping decide if and how to settle them, affecting bottom lines for clients and Chicago taxpayers — the mayor continues to accept campaign contributions from Romanucci and other employees of his law firm, records show.

While Johnson is not supposed to accept campaign donations from city contractors under municipal ethics rules, there’s no prohibition on taking campaign cash from lawyers doing battle with City Hall.

A founding partner of his firm, Romanucci gave $5,000 to Friends of Brandon Johnson in a contribution dated Feb. 18, according to Illinois State Board of Elections records.

Elizabeth Romanucci, who handles event planning for the firm, gave $1,000 in a contribution dated Feb. 24, records show.

Stefanie Stein, director of marketing for the firm, gave another $1,000 on the same date.

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Court docs show US govt knew about – and used – Chicago ‘black site’

Scandals don’t get much more disturbing than that of Homan Square. In 2015, the Guardian revealed Chicago Police had allegedly employed torture and days-long unlawful detention at the secretive “black site”-like Homan Square facility, a nondescript warehouse located in Chicago’s West-side Garfield Park neighborhood. Outraged and alarmed by these revelations, politicians and activists clamored for the US Department of Justice to investigate human rights abuses at the facility, which still operates today.

Despite the pleading, the DOJ elected not to investigate Homan Square, and instead conducted a broad investigation of Chicago Police Department use of force practices.

The DOJ’s failure to thoroughly examine the alleged abuses at Homan left onlookers confused. Investigating the CPD’s use of force was important, of course, but why wouldn’t the DOJ also investigate the Homan Square facility given the severity of the allegations?

One of the main figures pushing for a DOJ probe of Homan Square was then-Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin, who sent letters to the Department asking them to investigate the facility. Asked whether he ever received an explanation as to why the DOJ didn’t investigate the facility, Boykin said: “I did not, which is surprising right?”

Noir News has examined an element of the Homan Square story that provides important context regarding the Department’s decision: the Department of Justice was inside Homan Square all along, well aware of its use for extrajudicial detention, conducted its own interrogations in the facility, and is implicated in at least one of its most egregious abuse cases, that of Angel Perez.

Perez alleged CPD officers took him to Homan Square and pressured him to act as a cooperating witness in an investigation of alleged drug dealer Dwayne Payne. Namely, the officers wanted Perez to set up a drug purchase with Payne. Perez said he was taken to a room on the second floor of Homan Square, handcuffed to a bar, and placed in ankle shackles for several hours. Officers allegedly threatened to plant evidence on Perez and send “him to the Cook County jail to be raped by gang members.”

After refusing to cooperate in the investigation, Perez alleges he was physically and verbally tortured by the officers for hours and that they refused to grant him access to a lawyer. One of the officers told Perez, “‘I hear that a big black nigger dick feels like a gun up your ass.’” Then an officer “inserted a cold metal object, believed to be one of [the] officer’s service revolvers, into the plaintiff’s rectum causing the plaintiff severe pain and humiliation.” Finally, Perez relented and agreed to buy heroin from Payne for the officers.

Importantly, Perez’s lawsuit and The Guardian’s reporting on the matter solely implicated the CPD. But as Noir News has discovered, a 2022 court order reveals the investigation that resulted in Perez’s detention and torture at Homan Square wasn’t just a CPD operation. Rather, the investigation of Payne, the alleged drug dealer, was a “joint investigation with the USAO [United States Attorneys’ Office].” The United States Attorneys’ Office is an arm of the Department of Justice.

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Accused serial killer Antonio Reyes charged with six Chicago murders in 2020

Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors on Wednesday announced murder charges against an alleged serial killer accused of killing six people at random over a span of nine months in 2020.

Antonio Reyes, 21, is charged with the murders of six people and the attempted murders of four others – including three children, between March and November 2020, according to police and Cook County court records:

  • The shooting death of 31-year-old Francisco Mangana on March 2, 2020, in the 2600 block of West 59th Street;
  • The shooting death of 21-year-old Claudio Cossio on April 5, 2020, in the 4100 block of South Sacramento Avenue; and the attempted murder of another man in the same shooting;
  • The shooting death of 16-year-old Damian Duran on May 1, 2020, in the 5200 block of South Homan Avenue;
  • The shooting death of 26-year-old Luis Davalos Garcia on June 24, 2020, in the 5800 block of South Rockwell Avenue;
  • The shooting death of 31-year-old Jose Martinez on Nov. 8, 2020, in the 5400 block of South Homan Avenue; and the attempted murders of Martinez’s three children, who were all between 3 and 9 years old at the time;
  • The shooting death of 20-year-old Justin Gonzalez on Nov. 9, 2020, in the 4700 block of West 59th Street.

“These are six lives that were brutally taken,” Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling said. “It’s difficult to comprehend how anyone could easily take someone’s life, and especially so many in one year.”

Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Garien Gatewood said, “I cannot commend the work of the Chicago Police Department enough” for its work on the case.

“Our entire administration and our entire city is grateful for the work they did to remove a serial killer from the streets. I cannot thank the work of the State’s Attorney’s office enough, either,” Gatewood said.

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Frustrated Chicagoans Cheer ICE Deportations and Efforts Targeting Sanctuary Policies

Chicago resident Vashon Tuncle joined “The Ingraham Angle,” to share his support for ICE’s efforts as well as the frustration many in his community feel after being ‘abandoned’ by local and state officials.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) have made it clear that protecting the city and state’s sanctuary policies for illegals is more important than protecting American citizens.

Pritzker is so committed to keeping ICE from doing what is necessary to secure our country that he spread a vicious hoax to sow fear in the community by falsely claiming ICE agents visited a school on Chicago’s South Side.

It was, in fact, Secret Service agents investigating a threat at the school, not ICE.

On Thursday, The Department of Justice on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago for allegedly interfering with federal immigration enforcement.

The lawsuit claims Pritzker and Johnson, as well as others, asserts that several state and local laws are “designed to and in fact interfere with and discriminate against the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law in violation of the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution.”

Pritzker left his “tough talk” for President Trump rather than the criminals destroying his state.

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Chicago Alderman: We’re Getting More Upset at Trump for Enforcement than at Biden for Letting Criminals Into City

On Friday’s broadcast of “NewsNation Now,” Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez discussed the lawsuit between the Department of Justice and the city of Chicago, Cook County, and the state of Illinois over sanctuary policies and stated that it’s bizarre that officials weren’t upset at the Biden administration for allowing dangerous illegal immigrants to remain in Chicago and are only getting “upset now that judgment has come” under the Trump administration.

Lopez said, “[W]hat I think is important for your viewers to remember is that the target list that Tom Homan is going off of was compiled under the Biden administration. They knew we had 2,000, at least 2,000 dangerous individuals in our city that were threats to our neighborhoods and our country that they allowed to come here that they are only now going after.”

He continued, “But yet, no one is questioning why Biden allowed that to happen, they’re only upset now that judgment has come.”

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Illinois Governor and Chicago Mayor are Preventing ICE from Deporting Hundreds of Illegals in Local Jails

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, both Democrats, are reportedly blocking ICE agents from entering prisons and jails to deport hundreds of illegal aliens in the sanctuary city of Chicago. 

Real America’s Voice correspondent Ben Bergquam reports that there are about 300 illegal aliens in jail with ICE detainer requests, but leftist Chicago officials will not let ICE take them to be deported.

An immigration detainer is a request from ICE that asks local law enforcement agencies, including jails and prisons, to “notify the requesting agency as early as possible before they release a removable alien” and “hold the alien for up to 48 hours beyond the time they would ordinarily release them so DHS has time to assume custody in accordance with federal immigration law,” according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Immigration detainers are requests from federal law enforcement officers and agents, and officials only lodge them against aliens when there’s probable cause to believe that the person is removable from the United States under federal immigration law.”

“You’re going to see the federal government come after these cities and states in a way we’ve never seen before,” Berguam said. “I think we’re going to see defunding of sanctuary communities that don’t allow these ICE officers into their jails.”

As The Gateway Pundit recently reported, Illinois officials are working to sabotage the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts through legislative changes and preventing Chicago Police from working with the Federal government to remove illegals involved in drug crimes, gang-related crimes, prostitution, human trafficking, or child sex crimes.

The far-left Governor, JB Pritzker, was also recently caught making up a hoax, claiming that ICE agents raided an elementary school in Chicago last Friday.

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Chicago Mayor’s Office Improperly Blocked Access To Lavish ‘Gift Room’: Inspector General

Chicago’s Inspector General dropped a bombshell report revealing that Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office improperly blocked public access to a special room within City Hall containing gifts to the city – including designer handbags, cufflinks, and a personalized Mont Blanc pen.

A new report from Inspector General Deborah Witzburg’s office concludes that Johnson’s office violated a city ethics policy requiring that any gifts valued at more than $50 and “accepted on behalf of the city” be logged into a book that is made available to the public on the 5th floor of City Hall.

But when two undercover investigators from the IG’s office visited the mayor’s office last June, they were denied access to the log, and instead told to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to see it.

Then, when the IG’s office filed a FOIA request, the mayor’s office refused to respond to it on time – only to provide an incomplete spreadsheet of the gifts more than a month after the request was filed.

“That’s certainly concerning to me,” said Witzburg. ” Where there’s anything of value being exchanged, we would absolutely want to know whether those gifts are coming from people looking for influence in some way — whether those are lobbyists, or people doing business with the city.”

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Another Hoax Blows Up! Democrat Gov Pritzker, Fake News Media Falsely Claim ICE Agents Raided Chicago Elementary School – Here’s What Really Happened

Another day, another hoax.

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) falsely claimed that ICE agents visited a South Side school on Friday to smear the Trump Administration as it carried out immigration raids in Chicago this week.

It wasn’t ICE. Secret Service agents were investigating a threat at the school.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D) spread the lie that ICE agents raided an elementary school in Chicago on Friday.

“After a week of Republicans sowing fear and chaos, the first reports of raids in Chicago are at an elementary school,” Pritzker said.

“Targeting children and separating families is cruel and un-American,” he said.

The Chicago Tribune spread the hoax as well.

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Illinois and Chicago Defy Federal Deportation and Reject Effort by Alderman Raymond Lopez to Assist

Recent reporting has suggested that mass deportations at the hands of the new Trump Administration have had to be reconfigured.

In a Washington Post article from January 19, it was intimated that the Trump administration was reconsidering their plans because of a leak.

In the article incoming border czar Tom Homan was quoted, “We’re looking at this leak and will make a decision based on this leak.” Homan went on to say, “It’s unfortunate because anyone leaking law enforcement operations puts officers at great risk.”

Tom Homan addresses the latest plan for deportations on Fox News.

Chicago and its sanctuary city status has been a focus of the incoming Trump Organization’s targeted deportation plan. While an operational plan leak may be hindering the administration’s efforts, it certainly will not be the only obstacle the Federal government will encounter in those efforts to round up illegal immigrants.

Illinois has been passing state laws in the last few years that not only protect illegal immigrants but help them avoid detection altogether. This month HB 5164 passed both houses of Illinois Congress and is now awaiting signature from Governor J.B. Pritzker.

The bill addresses “resident” name change. It lowers the residency requirement from six months to three and allows petitioners to keep these name change documents from becoming public in the case that it can cause hardship or harm.

The petitioners would also be able to keep address information from becoming public. The bill would be applicable to criminal offenders as well.

This bill follows a pattern for the Illinois legislature as it pertains to illegal immigrants. Illinois has also passed HB3882 in 2023 allowing illegals to obtain a “standard identification card” replacing the former classification of “non-compliant identification card.” Illinois further muddied the waters of identifying illegals in this bill by changing definitions. Now, a “limited term REAL ID compliant identification card,” can be obtained by asylum seekers and refugees.

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Chicago HVAC Employee Discovers Potential Sleeper Cell – Apartment Full Of Explosives, Rifles & Fake IDs

A Chicago woman called the police after witnessing a cache of disturbing material inside an apartment where she was working on an HVAC service at the building.

“I came across some C4, some explosives, a rifle, a lot of fake IDs, a lot of fireman stuff, a lot of police force stuff and a lot of it looked like it was fake, you know?” HVAC employee Melissa Carraway told ABC 7.

She added, “There’s a suitcase with explosives that said ‘C4’ and I googled the pictures. Looks like military stuff. I saw a big rifle by a window. I said I’m going to call the police.”

“You know the bombing that happened in New Orleans and then in Vegas, so it kind of scared me” Carraway explained.

A person was taken into custody by police at the scene, but the man has not been charged with any crimes at the time of this article.

According to a WGN Investigates source, the suspect was previously fired from the Chicago Fire Department in 2022 and threatened to commit a mass shooting.

The incident takes place as the FBI warns of “ISIS-style vehicle attacks” copying the New Orleans New Year’s Day rampage.

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