Politics
City Council Panel Advances Plan to Block Jan. 6 Rioters from City Jobs After Trump Pardons
Rioters storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
A Chicago City Council committee on Wednesday advanced a measure that would block those who took part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol from working in city jobs after most were pardoned by President Donald Trump.
With the endorsement of the City Council’s Workforce Development Committee, the measure, authored by Alds. Gilbert Villegas (36th Ward), Matt Martin (47th Ward), Chris Taliaferro (29th Ward) and Bill Conway (34th Ward) now heads to the full City Council for a final vote on April 16.
“You should not be allowed to work for the government you tried to overthrow,” said Villegas, a former Marine, who added that he would not allow what happened on Jan. 6 to be “whitewashed.”
Ald. Nicholas Sposato (38th Ward) was the only City Council member to vote against the ban, saying of the attack on the Capitol, “we keep talking about an insurrection but what it really was, was a protest that went bad and turned into a riot.”
During his remarks, Sposato called those who fought with police “despicable,” but said those convicted of entering the Capitol without permission should not be prevented from working for the city. Sposato said those who participated in the “Black Lives Matter riots” and what he called the attack on the Columbus statue in Grant Park should also be banned from city employment.
Sposato repeated debunked right-wing talking points that some people were “waved in by security guards” only to be charged with a crime. Several judges and juries determined that is false.
Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people who were convicted of attacking the Capitol as part of an effort to overturn the 2020 election shortly after taking office in January.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker directed state hiring officials to block the employment of anyone who took part in the attack that claimed the lives of five members of the U.S. Capitol Police and injured an additional 174 officers.
Mayor Brandon Johnson declined to follow the governor’s lead, prompting Martin to partner with Villegas, Taliaferro and Conway, who are all veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces, to craft a ban with a city ordinance.
The city should have acted months ago, Martin said.
City officials told alderpeople they did not know whether any current city employees were convicted of participating in the Jan. 6 attack and then pardoned.
Approximately 50 Illinois residents were pardoned by Trump after being convicted of offenses connected to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, including former Chicago Police Officer Karol Chwiesiuk, who was convicted of four misdemeanors for entering the Capitol. He was sentenced to three months of home detention.
Chwiesiuk, who entered the office of U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), wore a CPD sweatshirt while inside the Capitol. In text messages about his trip to Washington, D.C., he used a racial slur for African Americans and bragged he had “knocked out a commie,” records show.
Chwiesiuk was fired from the Chicago Police Department in May for violating the department’s leave of absence policy. After he was charged, Chwiesiuk was prohibited from owning a gun, a condition of employment with CPD.
After Chwiesiuk was pardoned by the president, his lawyer told the Chicago Sun-Times Chwiesiuk hoped to get his job back with CPD.
Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling declined to rule out Chwiesiuk’s return to the CPD in response to a question from WTTW News at a Jan. 28 news conference, saying he would not comment on specific individuals.
“When it comes to (CPD), we look for people of the greatest character,” Snelling said. “This is the greatest police department in the world, I believe, and we have great people here.”
Inspector General Deborah Witzburg has repeatedly criticized Johnson and Snelling for failing to keep their promises to root out extremism in police ranks.
Witzburg has repeatedly found probes conducted by the Bureau of Internal Affairs into officers with documented ties to the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys deficient. The city’s watchdog has also blasted Snelling for declining to terminate those officers for violating the department rule that prohibits officers from bringing discredit to the department.
Johnson has also rejected Witzburg’s recommendation to form a task force “to plan for and implement a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach to preventing, identifying and eliminating extremist and anti-government activities and associations within CPD.”
Johnson has referred to the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys as “unconscionable hate groups” but said there are “very few courses of action that can be taken” if investigators do not gather evidence of wrongdoing by the officers.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
