A hot Attorney General race makes its way into the courts but not on the debate stage.
A defamation lawsuit Illinois Attorney General candidate Thomas DeVore filed names his girlfriend’s mother, Julie Craig, as a defendant. The complaint alleges that she wrote an article about DeVore.
DeVore’s girlfriend’s name is Riley Craig. In the suit named as “respondents” are Attorney General candidate David Shestokas, Bobbi Piton [US Senate candidate] and Jill Shestokas.
When Cities asked Tom DeVore, the attorney who unmasked Illinois children, about the suit he gave a statement: “He [David Shestokas] should stop propagating lies about his opponents by conspiring with mentally unstable family members of my girlfriend and explain how he can run for a statewide office, travel the state, buy signs and other marketing materials, and never file a financial disclosure form with the state board of elections.”
“What kind of guy sues his girlfriend’s mother for saying bad things about him?” asked candidate David Shestokas.
Shestokas called the lawsuit a terrible misuse of the legal process and among the reasons why people do not like attorneys.
“I would suggest that a history of suing people that allegedly are saying things about you that you don’t like is a misuse of the law and not necessarily a quality that the people of the State of Illinois would want in their attorney general,”said David Shestokas. “Goodness gracious there’s a lot of name calling that goes on in politics. You can’t sue everybody. You’d be really busy suing people every day.”
DeVore, when ask for an interview, said it was “probably not prudent right now.”
“I would encourage you to watch the pleadings in the case once it’s unsealed. You will see what they have been doing,” said DeVore.
Since filing the suit Devore had called Shestokas “Shestokas the Stalker” for sending a post card to Julie Austin, the lead plaintiff in the “Unmask the Children” case.
Shestokas’ postcard encouraged Austin to visit a campaign website. In a social media post made by DeVore: “Now this is reaching a new level of creepiness to the point one of my clients has asked for a cease and desist letter to be sent to him.”
Jill Shestokas the sister of David Shestokas and leader of the Shestokas campaign said the campaign sent postcards to hundreds of petitioners of DeVore’s.
Also in the social media post DeVore said it was “weird” that a “grown man and his sister still live with mommy.” Jill Shestokas told Cities her mother is 93-years old and is in good health but the pair take care of her.
“To just out of thin air pull out that we care for our 93-year old mother and to make some kind of weird accusation, it is outrageous, absolutely outrageous. She is filled with pearls of wisdom and we are doing this, the work that we are doing… for family. It is for the families of Illinois. … It was our grandmother who saw her brothers and sisters slaughtered by communists. We celebrate our family,” said Jill Shestokas. “The disrespect from him; calling children with special needs window lickers, disrespecting the marriage vows of his girlfriend and now disrespecting the elderly. I mean this is a long line of across the board disrespect for people.”
Cities obtained Springfield police body camera footage from April 20 2021. In this video Riley Craig (pink) appears to be upset and crying…police then escort her to DeVore’s truck to get her things. Also with her, her father and mother. In the video Craig’s mother says “She won’t even talk to me.” Julie Craig’s dad (the black Northface) walks with her and officers up to the room in which DeVore steps out of. After getting her belongings she walks back to her mother and “Jake,’ who is reference in the video. Julie Craig says in the video that she and Riley use to be inseparable, but that he [DeVore] has her “convinced.”
Jake is believed to be the husband of Julie Craig, Tom DeVore’s girlfriend.
In a social media post about a month after the incident caught on body cam… Craig said: “The night of the Lincoln Day dinner in Springfield things were so emotional for me. Things have been wild and a lot of tension has been happening with the divorce and so much more. I was drunk and we got into a little argument. That’s all. I didn’t call Jake first, I didn’t call my parents first. Trust me they are my LAST choice of someone to call. I couldn’t get ahold of my friends so I could go somewhere else and breathe, so I drunkingly and knowingly called my ex. Apparently their intentions (as my mother has whispered around to people) was to use this against me and fight me in a custody battle to take my son away from me.”
Photo courtesy Riley Craig Facebook page
A Richard Irvin/Avery Bourne slated candidate Steve Kim publicly took aim at DeVore, in a Fox 32 Chicago interview, and said he was concerned with DeVore temperament and mentioned DeVore called special needs children “window lickers.”
In the same interview DeVore said he has to accept Joe Biden won the 2020 election for the state of Illinois. Kim said that he hasn’t seen evidence to suggest 2020 was stolen. Shestokas said the candidates and Fox 32 did not reach out to him to share the debate stage. Shestokas’ team claims they have asked the other candidates to debate.
David Shestokas was representing the plaintiff in the case: Illinois Conservative Union vs Illinois State Board of Elections. Shestokas was in Georgia working on the senate run off campaigns.
“He has no credentials to do this job. He can cook a hotdog but he can’t run a fine dining restaurant,” said the sister of DeVore’s opponent Jill Shestokas. “He might run a motor boat, but he can’t run an aircraft carrier. The guy has never prosecuted a crime. It’s the chief law enforcement officer job of the state.”
