Mark Vargas exposes Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s alleged $180M+ taxpayer slush fund to his family’s Hyatt Regency, with $20B in state contracts flowing to his blind trust since 2019, despite Illinois’ $22B waste claims. His tax dodges—like removing toilets to save $300K—and opposition to fraud probes contrast with Chicago’s 1,600-officer shortage and record crime, while Mayor Brandon Johnson’s policies allegedly endanger ICE agents amid a 1,000% attack surge. Corporate exoduses like Boeing reflect Pritzker’s leadership failures, overshadowing even Gavin Newsom’s corruption. [Automatically generated summary]
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While President Donald Trump and his Doge reformers are trying to take a chainsaw at Federal Waste in Washington, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker appears to be playing a very different game, one that funnels massive amounts of taxpayer money into assets tied to his own family hotel empire.
What we're going to reveal to you today is not some recycled political attack.
It's a fresh information pulled straight from public records with conflict of interest written all over it.
Joining me now is the editor-in-chief of the Illinois Review, Mark Vargas, to help break down this story.
Mark, welcome in to the Stone Zone.
It's great to be with you, Roger.
Thank you.
You have worked with me here in the last 48 hours to produce a blockbuster story, one you'll find nowhere else, which essentially reveals that J.B. Pritzker, who is already a billionaire,
has used the Illinois Metropolitan Peer and Exposition Authority to funnel more than $180 million in taxpayer money into the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place Hotel in Chicago since 2011.
Pritzker appoints nearly half the members of the board of that authority, giving him enormous influence in how the taxpayers' dollars are spent.
But the point here most people may not understand is that Governor Pritzker, a billionaire, and his family own the Hyatt Regency, McCormick Place.
Tell us more about this.
It really is remarkable, Roger, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Given all the widespread and massive fraud happening that's being uncovered in Minnesota under the failed leadership of tiny dancer Tim Waltz, people are beginning to take a look at California and Illinois, for an example.
And what we've uncovered, Roger, really answers the why, because J.B. Pritzker has been so aggressive in attacking the president on a variety of fronts, whether it's illegal aliens over everyday citizens or whether it's lawlessness over law and order.
But in particular, he's attacked the president on DOSH and rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in government.
And Governor Pritzker has called rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in government.
He's called it an insult to Americans.
So that began to beg the question, why?
Well, we've certainly answered that why, that Governor Pritzker has spent his time before office and particularly while in office profiting off the backs of everyday Illinoisans.
What you mentioned was remarkable.
What triggered is that in fiscal year 2023, $8.8 million were spent for hotel infrastructure improvements for the Hyatt Hotel there in downtown Chicago.
Hyatt Hotel obviously is owned by the Pritzker family.
And when we learned that the board that you had mentioned, this MPEA board that approves the taxpayer-funded money, we also learned that Governor Pritzker controls almost a majority of the board because he appoints five of the 11 members.
And so they certainly are not questioning where to put those tax dollars or the fact that those tax dollars are going into the Pritzker family pockets that includes the Illinois governor.
But it's much deeper than that, Roger, the $180 million.
We've also discovered that Governor Pritzker, since taking office in 2019, his so-called blind trust has also held interest in 12 for-profit companies that have collectively secured more than $20 billion in Illinois state contracts, all funded by who?
The taxpayers.
And Illinois has been raising income taxes, sales tax, business tax.
It's the highest tax state in the nation.
And now we know why.
Because the hard-earned money of everyday blue-collar hardworking Illinois, that money is not to improve government services.
That money isn't being used to improve their lives, create a safe environment for their community.
No, that money is going to line the pockets of Governor J.B. Pritzker and his closest allies and family members.
I do want to correct one misstatement I made.
The actual hotel facility is owned by a state authority, but the Hyatt Corporation, controlled by the Pritzker family, operates the hotel under a very lucrative management agreement that pays a percentage of gross revenue plus incentive fees tied to the profitability of the hotel.
Now, as you point out in this groundbreaking piece at the Illinois Review today, this latest $8.8 million awarded to the hotel in fiscal year 2023 was initially called infrastructure improvement.
It was part of a $59.5 million renovation approved in December of 2024, which covers 1,258 guest rooms and additional projects upgrading more than 93,000 square feet of common areas.
Now, these, as you point out, are not routine repairs.
These are value-boosting investments, HVAC, plumbing, electrical upgrades that directly increase occupancy, which increases revenue, which increases long-term profitability, which puts more money into the pockets of the Pritzker family.
It really is remarkable.
And again, it answers this question.
Why has Governor Pritzker been so opposed to any programs, any organizations, any groups wanting to explore waste, fraud, and abuse in Illinois?
This answers it, because his hotel and his blind trust businesses have secured all of this money, all taxpayer money.
We also know, Roger, that's not in this article, that it's been estimated that since Governor Pritzker has been in office since 2019, over $22 billion has been wasted.
And this is separate from the taxpayer money going to his hotels and to line his business, the pockets of his business associates.
This is on top of all of that, and that's a very, very conservative number.
So obviously, we know that number is much, much higher.
But the most conservative number is around $22 billion in wasted taxpayer money on top of what's been happening and what we've uncovered already.
So again, I think this is making what's happened in what's currently happening in Minnesota with Tim Waltz and his team.
I think that's just a tip of the iceberg on what's happening here in Illinois.
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According to Forbes magazine, Governor Pritzker's personal net worth is estimated at $3.9 billion.
I recall an anecdote where he cheated the taxpayers when it came to property taxes.
As I recall, because he didn't want any neighbors, he bought the mansion next to his, left it vacant.
Well, you take it from there.
He did.
He bought the mansions.
He didn't want any neighbors.
He left it vacant, but he wanted to figure out how to cheat on taxes.
So what did he come up with?
He removed all of the toilet from the home, which makes it legally uninhabitable.
And I think there were somewhere around the range of nine bathrooms.
So they removed nine toilets.
As a result, that home became legally uninhabitable, and Governor Pritzker was able to skirt over 300,000, paying over $300,000 in property taxes.
When that was discovered during his campaign, he was caught flat-footed, came up with lame excuses, and ended up paying the difference.
But it triggered a federal inquiry.
And what was the key takeaway from this entire episode was that if Governor Pritzker knows, he knows how to skirt the rules, he knows where there are gaps, and he knows how to manipulate the system for his own benefit.
If he could do that regarding toilets and saving $300,000, imagine what he's doing with a state that has a $54 billion annual budget.
And we're seeing that with $180 million going to his hotel and $20 billion in state government contracts all funded by the taxpayers going into the pockets of his business friends and associates.
Mark, as I recall, it was you and the Illinois Review that exposed the fact that Governor Pritzker, a Mayor Brandon Johnson, a man who is the mayor of Chicago, and if his IQ was one point lower,
you'd have to water him like a plant, specifically passed an ordinance that said that the Chicago city police officers were not to come to the rescue or aid of ICE agents if they were endangered, which I believe you got a legal opinion that showed that the governor and the mayor could be personally liable if any of those ICE agents sustained physical injury.
That's right.
The governor signed an executive order, and federal ICE agents are experiencing an over 1,000% increase in attacks on federal ICE agents.
And one of the largest perpetrators, pun intended, of that violent and dangerous rhetoric is Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who have called them thugs, domestic terrorists.
They've now signed executive orders prohibiting local law enforcement from assisting federal ICE agents when they're surrounded by violent and dangerous mobs, when their lives are in danger.
And we saw that example on a 911 transcript where federal ICE agents were calling for backup, and they were told by the 911 operator that leadership is saying the cops have to stand down.
It's absolutely remarkable.
Under his failed leadership, it's why some of the largest corporations in the country, if not the world, have left Illinois and Chicago altogether, like Boeing and Caterpillar and Citadel, because of the high taxes, because of the high crime, and because of the failed Democratic leadership of J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has an approval rating of just 6%.
I do remember when very bizarrely, Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago, said all of the civil unrest and crime in the city of Chicago was the fault of President Richard Nixon, who hasn't been in power in this country in over 50 years.
Very, very strange behavior.
Also reports that Mayor Johnson is in and out of the hospital constantly after suffering panic attacks.
This does not sound like a man who's fit for leadership to me.
No, sources have shared that over two dozen times in just less than three years, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has checked himself into Northwestern Memorial Hospital for panic attacks.
They use the underground entrance.
He uses a different, he uses an alias, alias a different name.
He's identifiable by his birth date, but they've gone to great lengths.
The city has gone to great lengths to make sure that they hide that.
They also, he's also increased his Chicago Police Department detail to over 150 police officers protecting him and his family.
Yet they tell us that Chicago is perfectly safe in the idea that there's a crime epidemic.
I specifically remember J.D. Pritzker, I think he was on CNN or perhaps it was Fox, insisting that the published crime statistics from the FBI were wrong and that the neighborhoods and communities of Chicago were perfectly safe.
It's remarkable that he can say that.
Don't believe me and that's your lying eyes when you're looking at the statistic.
In 2025, Chicago was the most dangerous city in America regarding shootings and murders.
Chicago is more dangerous than New York City, than Los Angeles, than Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, D.C., the most dangerous city in America.
And Pritzker likes to say that President Trump has created a manufactured crisis.
67,000 dangerous criminals on the street because of no cash bail.
That's not a manufactured crisis.
1,600 police officers short, resulting in over 220,000 high-priority 911 calls going unanswered in 2023.
That's not a manufactured crisis.
And finally, over 90% of Chicago's most violent and vicious and dangerous criminals are freeing out on the streets.
Why?
Because they've never been identified or charged.
That's not a manufactured crisis.
This is reality for everyday residents and tourists to Chicago.
It is a war zone.
I really don't understand this concept of the blind trust.
I remember when Dick Cheney was the vice president of the United States, his Halliburton stock, he was the president of Halliburton before becoming vice president, was in the blind stock.
And of course, that stock became worth billions of dollars because he lied our way into the war in Iraq, falsely claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, yellow cake uranium to develop weapons of mass destruction, and the most outrageous lie of all, claiming that Iraq had participated in the 9-11 attacks on America.
But if you know that there's Halliburton stock in your blind trust, how blind can your trust be?
J.B. Pritzker knows that there's Hyatt stock in his blind trust, and you pointed out that over $20 billion in state contracts with companies tied to his own personal financial interests, all within his so-called blind trust.
Mark Vargas has discovered that J.B. Pritzker is not the only 2028 aspirant who's got deep and massive corruption problems.
Hospitals as Lifelines00:01:54
When we come back, we're going to focus on Gavin Newsom, the would-be president from California.
He's got great hair and a great line of BS, but it's possible that the epic personal corruption of Newsom could even dwarf that of J.B. Pritzker.
Don't go away.
We'll be right back with that story right here in the Stone Zone.
Thanks for listening to the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
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