Epstein Files Backfire: Epstein Was Asked to Donate on Behalf of JB Pritzker’s Campaign – Years After His 2008 Conviction for Crimes Against a Minor

By Illinois Review

Many of the long-awaited Epstein files are finally out – and Democrats who spent years demanding their release are suddenly silent now that their own party leaders keep appearing in the documents.

Among them: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and, here in Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker and his billionaire family.

The newly released 20,000-plus pages from the House Oversight Committee do not place JB Pritzker on Epstein’s island, his jet, or inside the man’s criminal enterprise. But they do expose something Democrats hoped voters would never see: a 2018 solicitation sent to Jeffrey Epstein on behalf of JB Pritzker’s gubernatorial campaign – a full decade after Epstein was convicted in 2008 for soliciting sex from a minor.

The email, sent by Democrat-aligned operatives linked to ActBlue, pitched Pritzker as a “rising star” and invited Epstein to a Chicago donor event.

This wasn’t before Epstein’s fall from grace. It wasn’t before the world knew who he was. It was years after a Florida judge sentenced him for exploiting a minor – and years after Epstein became one of America’s most infamous registered sex offenders.

Epstein ultimately did not donate, according to FEC filings. But that’s irrelevant. The fact that JB Pritzker’s campaign – or the Democratic fundraising machine attached to it – was targeting Epstein for cash in 2018 raises serious questions about judgment, ethics, and the priorities of the Democratic donor class.

Pritzker’s office quickly called the email a “standard bulk solicitation,” claiming it was sent to thousands of potential donors and that JB never met Epstein. But that excuse only leads to more questions: Why was Epstein still on Democrats’ donor lists a decade after his conviction for sex crimes involving a minor? Who kept him there? And why?

The scandal has also revived the longstanding ties between Epstein and the broader Pritzker family, particularly Hyatt executive chairman Thomas Pritzker, who appears repeatedly throughout Epstein’s contact books and meeting notes.

The political irony is impossible to ignore. Just days before the document release, Pritzker bragged to the Associated Press that the Epstein files would be “devastating for Trump.”

Instead, they ensnared some of the most powerful Democrats in America – including Pritzker, Jeffries, and longtime liberal mega-donors.

Illinois Democrats love to claim the moral high ground on protecting women and children. Yet their own fundraising arms were still courting a man convicted in 2008 of soliciting sex from a minor.

JB Pritzker may not have flown on Epstein’s jet or visited his island. But his campaign’s solicitation – sent long after Epstein’s crimes were national news – reveals a Democratic machine comfortable seeking money from a convicted predator.

Illinois voters deserve to know why.