McHenry Times

There could be more people responsible for malicious campaign mailers targeting McHenry County Clerk Joe Tirio in the March primary than the two Democratic political consultants named in McHenry County Court on Friday.

Tirio told the McHenry Times that he will will almost certainly file a defamation suit in the wake of Friday’s naming of Sean Tenner of KNI Communications of Chicago and Michael Noonan of The Roosevelt Group, also of Chicago, as two responsible for the mailers. Tirio said he and his lawyer will sit down in the next few days to discuss further legal action.

“I’m sure they [the consultants] will be asked in depositions as part of the defamation suit who was behind all this,” Tirio said. “You know they didn’t decide on their own to go after Joe Tirio.”

In court on Friday, Richard Lewandowski, president of Breaker Press, the Chicago-based printer of the mailers, identified the two consultants, according to a report in the Northwest Herald. Both have done work for top Democratic candidates; their former clients include President Barack Obama and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

When Tenner was asked about his involvement with the mailers, he said neither he nor his firm were responsible in any way.

“I did not—nor did anyone with my firm—write, design, print, mail or pay for the mailers in question,” Tenner wrote in an email.

Under threat of contempt and imprisonment, Lewandowski also told Judge Kevin Costello that he heard through a third party that Jack Franks, McHenry County Board chairman, was involved. Tenner and Noonan both worked on Frank’s 2016 campaign, the Herald said.

Neither Noonan nor Franks responded to requests for comments.

The Herald also reported that in April and May, Jack Franks’s campaign organization paid $19,500 to KNI for data support, fundraising expenses and advertising.

Over eight months of court delays, those responsible for the mailers hid behind a shadowy group, the Illinois Integrity Fund, the only identifying name on the mailers. A visit to the address listed for the group found no working office, and the group never register with the Illinois State Board of Elections as required by law.

The mailers accused Tirio of keeping a “secret taxpayer-funded slush fund” to take trips and of padding his payroll with “patronage workers.” Tirio’s primary opponent, Janice Dalton, used language nearly identical to that in the mailers in a series of robocalls during the campaign.

No evidence supported the allegations and Tirio denied them. He said that the three mailers were the only focus of this long court battle but additional legal action will cite Facebook ads and other social media using the same charged language against him.

For an earlier story, Tirio’s lawyer, Philip Prossnitz of Woodstock, said that a certain amount of mudslinging politics is to be expected, "But what was done here was unconscionable. Joe is a good man. We believe in the eye of the law these mailers went too far.”

A former state representative, Franks has been under investigation by the Edgar County Watchdogs (ECW) for possible state ethics law violations. In October, ECW ran a story on its website, Illinois Leaks, saying that in its opinion Franks filed false Statements of Economic Interest (SEI) with the state.

“Franks claimed to have worked for numerous local public bodies and listed them on his SEI statements since at least 2009, with the exception of keeping that information off his SEI statement while running for County Board Chairman,” ECW said. “We now suspect he kept it off of that one because many of the locals who would have read it would have quickly discovered what we did, from four hours away.”

The story cited numerous local governments that said Franks never did the work he claimed on his SEI.

“We pointed out his ethics issues months ago for filing false Statements of Economic Interest,” Kirk Allen of ECW wrote in email. “I spoke during a past County Board meeting and pointed out that Franks represents the most evil kind of politics. I was chastised for those comments by certain board members. The news from the recent hearing in the Tirio case appears to validate my comments at that meeting!”