‘Come and get me,’ Illinois Governor JB Pritzker taunted Donald Trump last month.
And it now appears Trump’s Justice Department is doing just as he asked – launching a new criminal investigation that threatens to embroil the billionaire governor, the Daily Mail can exclusively reveal.
Pritzker is a potential 2028 presidential contender. He is worth an estimated $3.9 billion, according to Forbes, with much of his wealth coming from his inherited stake in the Hyatt Hotels fortune.
The case revolves around Pritzker’s alleged links to his wife’s friend, Jenny Thornley, who volunteered on his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018 and was convicted of forgery in 2023.
‘We are investigating this,’ a top official at the DOJ told the Daily Mail.
‘People have been so brazen for so long because they thought no one would ever look at them and they were above the law.’
Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the DOJ has been accused of targeting Trump’s political enemies including New York attorney general Letitia James, former FBI head James Comey, former National Security Advisor John Bolton and others.
The new criminal investigation linked to Pritzker is likely to lead to further Democrat claims of politically motivated action by the DOJ.
But court filings and internal reports obtained by the Daily Mail reveal a series of surprising links between the felonious forger Thornley and the Illinois governor.
Jenny Thornley was close with Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and his wife and worked for the Illinois State Police Merit Board when she claimed she worked for the Governor’s Office in her workers’ comp filing
Pritzker and his wife could become the country’s First Couple if his dreams of reaching the White House are met in 2028
Thornley, 45, worked for the Illinois State Police Merit Board, a government agency that rules on police promotions and discipline.
According to Illinois prosecutors, she faked overtime hours at her job between 2014 and 2019, boosting her pay by $67,071.14, and forged her boss’ signature to get the hours approved. She was later convicted of forgery.
After Thornley found out she was being investigated for the forgery, she accused her boss, Jack Garcia, of groping her breast, and filed a workers compensation claim for ‘psychological injury’ over the supposed incident in 2020, according to a court filing in a civil lawsuit by a colleague from the Merit Board.
The Board hired law firm McGuire Woods to investigate the groping allegation. The firm found no evidence of it – instead discovering computer records showing Thornley was browsing Amazon.com in a different office during the time she claimed Garcia groped her.
Pritzker first became linked to the case when Thornley filed her workers compensation claim through the governor’s office, instead of her employer the Merit Board.
On the form, she claimed that she worked in the governor’s office, that Pritzker was her direct supervisor, and provided two personal phone numbers for him on the form as a reference.
And alleged text messages uncovered by an internal probe tie her to Pritzker’s wife, Mary Kathryn (‘MK’).
Thornley allegedly texted MK in February 2020 saying, ‘I need JB to know what’s going on’ and ‘I appreciate your friendship’, McGuire Woods’ report on their internal investigation said.
MK Pritzker and Thornley were described as ‘personal friends’ in the lawsuit brought by Police Merit Board executive director Emily Fox
The McGuire Woods report says Pritzker’s chief counsel Ann Spillane asked him about his conversations with Thornley, indicating he knew about the case well before it went public
Governor Pritzker’s spokesperson told the Daily Mail that regarding Thornley’s case, the ‘one consistent goal’ of his office was ‘to ensure that all the allegations were thoroughly investigated.’
But federal law enforcement is now taking another look at the facts, a top DOJ official told the Daily Mail.
Since Thornley’s compensation forms were likely sent by mail, it is possible any false claims in them could be investigated for the federal crime of mail fraud – though that offense has a five-year statute of limitations, which may have run out.
And a federal probe could lead to subpoenas of the Pritzkers’ communications from the time, revealing exactly what their involvement and knowledge really was, if any.
Thornley’s workers compensation claim was based on the groping claim that McGuire Woods found to be baseless.
But a memo from Illinois Central Management Services to the state attorney general’s office said Thornley’s compensation claim cost taxpayers $63,500 in benefits and a further $95,200 in legal, medical and investigative costs.
The details of the case were only revealed in court filings in 2021 when her Merit Board colleague Emily Fox filed a whistleblower civil lawsuit against Thornley over it, on behalf of the people of Illinois.
Pritzker is estimated to be worth some $3billion as the heir to the Hyatt fortune. The hotel group was bought by members of his family in 1957
Then-Police Merit Board executive director Jack Garcia was accused of groping Thornley’s breast. But an investigation found no evidence and showed Thornley was in another office browsing Amazon.com at the time of the alleged attack
In her workers comp filing, Thornley claimed Pritzker was her supervisor and that she worked in the Governor’s Office – assertions Fox said were false
Fox’s legal filings claimed the Pritzkers were involved in Thornley’s alleged scheme.
But before the case could go to discovery and a civil trial, the state attorney general’s office used an Illinois law to take control of it and force its dismissal on procedural grounds. The merits of the claim were not addressed.
Thornley was eventually prosecuted for forging her boss’s signature on her overtime forms.
But case files reveal she cut a lenient plea deal with the Illinois attorney general’s office, allowing her to repay just $10,000 in restitution, despite falsely claiming more than $67,000 in overtime according to Illinois Central Management Services.
And thanks to her plea deal, Thornley was sentenced to just 18 months of ‘conditional discharge’ in November 2023, meaning she did not serve any jail time.
Then, less than five months later in April last year, the Sangamon County Court agreed to cut short even that light-touch sentence.
The lack of a criminal trial, and the AG’s office dismissal of Fox’s civil case, meant lawyers never got a chance to subpoena for communications between Thornley and the Pritzkers, as well as other potential evidence of the Governor’s alleged involvement in the case, if any.
Because of this, the Justice Department has decided to take another look at the case, according to the DoJ source.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s Republican opponent in the 2022 election, Tom DeVore, warned that if pursued, the case was ‘going to open up Pandora’s Box of the governor’s office at the highest levels’.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi is looking at the Thornley case to see if Pritzker did anything wrong. ‘People have been so brazen for so long because they thought no one would ever look at them,’ a senior DOJ official said
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, a close ally of Pritzker, used an obscure Illinois law to intervene and get Fox’s case dismissed – the merits of the claim were not addressed
Raoul and Governor Pritzker are close political allies. Raoul received almost $3million from Pritzker’s campaign committee for his political run in 2018 and a further $1million in 2022.
Pritzker was asked about the case at an August 2022 press conference. He said he knew ‘nothing other than what I read in the newspaper about it’.
But the law firm hired by the Merit Board to investigate Garcia and Thornley suggested otherwise.
The report by McGuire Woods said they got Pritzker’s general counsel Ann Spillane to ask the governor about his conversations with Thornley – indicating Pritzker knew about the case well before any news stories were written about it.
McGuire Woods lawyers said in the report that they found a February 1, 2020 voicemail on Thornley’s phone to a staffer in the Governor’s Office, saying Thornley had spoken to ‘JB’ the night before and that he ‘was not very happy with what’s going on’.
However, the law firm’s report said they ‘do not believe this statement was truthful’, and through Spillane, Pritzker told them he ‘has no recollection of having a conversation with Thornley’.
Garcia, despite helping bring Thornley to justice and being cleared of groping claims by the law firm probe, was ousted from his job by an amendment to a law introduced by Pritzker’s party.
Illinois Democrats inserted a provision into a large 2021 criminal justice bill which banned former state police officers from serving as executive director of the Merit Board – which forced ex-trooper Garcia to step down from his role.
Republican state representative John Curran told the State Journal-Register that the move was ‘clearly retaliation against Director Garcia’.
Garcia, who is now police chief of Burbank, a Chicago suburb, declined to comment.
Fox, who went on to become executive director of the State Police Merit Board, did not respond to requests for comment.
But her lawsuit against Thornley made clear her opinion that Pritzker may have been involved in the case.
She described Thornley as ‘a former political operative of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and a personal friend of the Governor’s wife, M.K. Pritzker,’ in a 2022 appeal brief – which ultimately failed to overturn the dismissal of her case.
Her lawyer wrote in the failed legal filing that ‘Thornley, who never worked in the Governor’s office, listed the Governor as her personal supervisor and provided his personal phone number’ in support of her workers compensation claim.
‘Thornley texted with M.K. Pritzker seeking the Governor’s help,’ her lawyer claimed.
The governor’s spokesperson told the Daily Mail that it was they who ‘demanded’ an investigation of the claims against Thornley by the Merit Board and the Illinois Department of Insurance.
‘Courts already have concluded that allegations of wrongdoing against the Governor’s Office are unsubstantiated,’ the spokesperson said, referring to the dismissal of Fox’s lawsuit against Thornley at the request of AG Raoul’s office, a decision which was upheld by the state appellate court.
‘It is wrong – and illogical – to suggest that the Governor’s Office somehow assisted Ms. Thornley in her misconduct when it was the Governor’s Office that ensured that all the facts were investigated,’ the governor’s spokesperson said. ‘Those very investigations led to Ms. Thornley’s prosecution.’
AG Raoul’s office did not comment.
