Article Summary
- Tom DeVore, who unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for Illinois attorney general in 2022, will lose his law license for 60 days, per a recent Illinois Supreme Court order.
- During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, DeVore represented then-state Rep. Darren Bailey, who would go on to lose his own bid for governor in 2022, in a lawsuit challenging Gov. JB Pritzker’s stay-at-home orders.
- The attorney later signed up hundreds of plaintiffs for more COVID-related legal challenges.
- One of those clients was a married Springfield salon owner who quickly became DeVore’s girlfriend, according to state disciplinary panel documents. The panel ruled DeVore acted imprudently both by having a sexual relationship with her and in his actions after their relationship ended.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
The Illinois Supreme Court has ordered former Illinois attorney general Republican nominee Tom DeVore’s law license suspended for 60 days, following a yearslong public feud involving his client-turned-girlfriend and the state’s attorney discipline board.
The court’s order affirms a recommendation this spring by the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, which found “clear and convincing evidence” that DeVore’s actions related to Riley Craig had broken several Illinois Supreme Court ethics rules.
Craig, a Springfield salon owner, was one of the hundreds of clients DeVore represented in dozens of lawsuits after gaining notoriety for representing then-state Rep. Darren Bailey in an April 2020 lawsuit challenging Gov. JB Pritzker’s COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. Two years later, DeVore joined Bailey on an unsuccessful statewide GOP ticket to unseat Pritzker and Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
Read more: Lawmaker sues Pritzker, alleges improper use of emergency powers
DeVore, a lawyer from rural Greenville in the Metro East, began a romantic relationship with Craig after filing a pandemic-related lawsuit on her behalf in May 2020, according to ARDC documents. Though Craig’s litigation against the Pritzker administration was unsuccessful, their relationship continued for nearly three years.
In mounting a defense to the ARDC’s case, DeVore claimed that his work as Riley’s attorney in her effort to get her salon reopened had ended by the time their romantic involvement began in late May or June 2020. The ARDC disputed DeVore’s timeline, pointing to continued attorney behavior in that case.
But beyond that, DeVore went on to represent Riley in three other legal matters — including her divorce — that summer. That “demonstrated an unbroken continuation of his attorney-client relationship” with Craig, the ARDC ruled.
The disciplinary panel began looking into DeVore’s behavior in 2021, and during that initial investigation, Craig said she was not a client when their sexual relationship began. She repeated that claim on social media while DeVore was running for attorney general in 2022.
But in May 2023, a few months after Craig and DeVore broke up, Craig “threatened to change her story” to the disciplinary panel so that DeVore would “lose his law license,” according to the ARDC report.
The disciplinary panel also pointed out that “even consensual sexual activity between an attorney and a client constitutes an impermissible conflict of interest because the attorney’s emotional involvement with the client creates a significant risk that the attorney’s independent professional judgment will be impaired.”
DeVore also got involved in Craig’s business venture to launch a hair product business, for which the pair took out $600,000 in loans in 2021. But in doing so, the ARDC found DeVore failed to provide “required safeguards” for Craig.
The business was failing in the spring of 2023 when Craig made her threat to expose DeVore, according to ARDC documents. Following that May 2023 meeting, Craig filed her own complaint with the ARDC and filed for personal bankruptcy to avoid responsibility for the company’s debt.
But the day after Craig filed for bankruptcy, DeVore sent an email to both Craig and a vendor that the company owed $30,000, which alerted the vendor to Craig’s filing — and the fact the vendor could still come after the company for its debt. The email also called Craig a “petulant child” and apologized for her “nasty character,” according to the ARDC report.
The disciplinary panel also found the email violated state ethics rules for attorneys.
DeVore declined to comment on the court’s order to Capitol News Illinois. His law license will be suspended for 60 days beginning Oct. 10.
But the attorney has been staying busy. Earlier this year, he formed a political action committee dubbed “Tom DeVore’s RINO Removal,” referring to the acronym for “Republicans in Name Only.” DeVore has been recruiting candidates to face GOP state legislators in primary races, including House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savana.
He’s also filed several lawsuits against fellow Republicans in the last year, including one accusing McCombie of censoring him by deleting his comments and barring him from posting on her Facebook page. On Monday, a federal judge granted McCombie’s motion to dismiss the suit.
By Hannah Meisel
Capitol News Illinois
hmeisel@capitolnewsillinois.com
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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