A Chicago reporter who drew the personal ire of outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot took the opportunity Wednesday to level some parting shots as she prepares to leave office.
Journalist William Kelly spoke out at a city council meeting, noting the Democrat revoked his press credentials. He is certain that he knows the reason he was not seated in the area designated for reporters.
As Kelly detailed, “I was going viral asking you obvious questions and instead of answering them, you told me that crime was down.” Lightfoot’s reelection campaign was damaged by his revelations, “so you revoked my media credential.
As he said at the city council meeting, “that should never happen in a free country.”
That led to the reporter suing the Windy City mayor over allegations that she attempted to stop the media from highlighting her “multiple failures” in City Hall and numerous “false statements.”
William Kelly to Mayor Lightfoot: "get the hell out of my city… you are a pandemic.”https://t.co/WQ9wBHeLhV
— Mr Producer (@RichSementa) March 16, 2023
The verbal dress-down hardly ended there. The mayor’s rival charged that “you shut down our schools, you shut down the churches, you shut down the businesses.”
He continued that the Lightfoot administration brought Chicago lower than he ever thought possible. Kelly’s public scolding continued with exclamations of “shame on you” and telling her to get out of his city.
Kelly operates a TV production and event company. He is a longtime Lightfoot critic who used his credentials to shed light on the ineptitude of her administration as violent crime spiraled out of control.
The city tallied a shocking 800 murders last year, its highest total in a quarter of a century.
The 60-year-old Lightfoot followed up her reelection defeat last month by blaming racial and gender politics for voters booting her out of office. Her response to Kelly’s charges is inaudible in the footage of the meeting, but he then added “you are a pandemic” before walking off.
Lightfoot and her former police superintendent were accused of fabricating an altercation in July as a pretense to revoke Kelly’s press credential.
Just since 2019, Lightfoot oversaw the decline of a great American city. Large corporations cannot exit Chicago fast enough, and its crime wave became tabloid fodder. The mayor’s exit, as Kelly so vehemently noted, cannot come a minute too soon.
