Todd Lighty

J.B. Pritzker speaks at a news conference in Chicago.

Pritzker gave Blagojevich campaign $100,000; Holocaust museum got $1M grant

May 15, 2019 at 9:29 p.m.

In Illinois politics, timing is everything. Consider fall 2006. J.B. Pritzker was raising money to build a Holocaust museum in north suburban Chicago. Gov. Rod Blagojevich was raising money for...

IPRA reopens investigation into fatal 2014 shooting by Chicago police

May 23, 2019 at 4:46 a.m.

Chicago police oversight authorities have reopened their investigation into a 2014 shooting by an officer, again digging into the past of a Police Department and disciplinary system seeking to shake...

Overtly racist, sexist and homophobic emails were distributed for years among a group of top-level Chicago water department supervisors.

State worker retiring amid probe of racist emails in water department scandal

May 15, 2019 at 9:25 p.m.

A veteran state employee whose personal email address was a source of racist, sexist and anti-gay emails that circulated among bosses in the Chicago water department is retiring, state officials...

Racist emails scandal moves beyond Chicago as Illinois opens investigation into state employee’s role

May 15, 2019 at 9:25 p.m.

State officials are investigating a longtime employee whose personal email address is a source of racist, sexist and anti-gay emails at the center of the Chicago water department's burgeoning scandal,...

Water department email scandal spreads to private contract worker

May 15, 2019 at 9:24 p.m.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration moved to bar a private contract employee from working on city projects, part of spreading fallout from an email scandal in the water department where some...

Racist emails show Chicago official joked about ‘safari’ tour to see violence in black neighborhoods

May 15, 2019 at 9:24 p.m.

In a city scarred by a deep and troubling history with guns, a supervisor in the scandal-plagued water department used his city email account to negotiate firearms deals and make...

Newly released racist, sexist emails show scope of scandal at Chicago’s water department

May 15, 2019 at 9:24 p.m.

City emails newly obtained by the Tribune cast light on the scope and offensiveness of racist, sexist and anti-gay slurs by politically connected supervisors at the top levels of the...

Aspen Suites hotel in Rochester, Minn., is where Republican political operative Peter W. Smith killed himself, according to police records.

Peter W. Smith’s final day: ‘It seemed like he had a lot on his mind’

August 22, 2019 at 5:08 a.m.

Months after he said he'd started to quietly work to contact Russian hackers to look for a cache of Hillary Clinton's emails, Peter W. Smith called The Wall Street Journal...

Peter W. Smith, GOP operative who sought Clinton’s emails from Russian hackers, committed suicide, records show

August 22, 2019 at 5:07 a.m.

A Republican donor and operative from Chicago's North Shore who said he had tried to obtain Hillary Clinton's missing emails from Russian hackers killed himself in a Minnesota hotel room...

Lavone Haywood, chief probation officer for Cook County, has announced his retirement.

Probation chief to leave, continuing department’s upheaval

May 23, 2019 at 4:38 a.m.

The head of the scandal-plagued Cook County Adult Probation Department plans to leave his post at the end of the year, according to the chief judge's office. The announcement that...

All Stories