Sullivan Departure Is Apparent Fallout From Email Referring To ‘rape In Champaign,’ ‘ghost Workers’

SPRINGFIELD – The state’s agriculture director resigned last weekend at the request of Gov. JB Pritzker for failing to disclose contents of a 2012 email that pointed to the possible cover-up of a “rape in Champaign” and government “ghost workers,” the governor’s office said Monday. John Sullivan, a Democratic state senator from 2003 to 2017 who became ag director last year, knew about the July 2012 email “contemporaneously” but did not disclose its contents to state investigators, Pritzker’s office said. The email in question was uncovered in an open records request by WBEZ-FM radio station in Chicago last week.