Ex-Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot sued by bank over $11K in unpaid credit card bills — despite hefty salary

Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is apparently as bad at managing her finances as she was the Windy City’s — she’s been hit with a lawsuit for being over $11,000 in arrears on her credit card.

Lightfoot, 63, who in 2023 became the first Chicago mayor not re-elected in 40 years, was served in October by JPMorgan Chase Bank at her $900,000 home for failing to pay around $11,078 in credit card bills, according to a legal complaint viewed by the Chicago Tribune.

According to the complaint, Lightfoot’s last payment on the card was in August for $5,000, and she didn’t object to the final statement before the bank declared the debt a charge-off in March.

Ex-Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is being sued by JPMorgan Chase after failing to pay a more than $11,000 credit card bill. Getty Images

Revelations of debt-riddled Democrat’s struggles to pay her bills on time come in spite of earning a staggering gross adjusted income of $971,626 between 2014 and 2017 while a partner at law firm Mayer Brown, and a generous $216,000 per annum as mayor of Chicago from 2019 to 2023, according to the outlet.

The Tribune also noted that in 2021, Lightfoot reported $402,414 in adjusted gross income, but that same year took $210,000 in early distributions from her retirement savings to boost her mayoral salary.

Since her disastrous tenure as mayor, Lightfoot has held several visiting professor roles, including at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and Harvard University.

She’s also hopped on the anti-ICE bandwagon, launching the “ICE Accountability Project,” an online repository for sharing and documenting Chicagoland residents’ encounters with agents since the start of the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” immigration crackdown last September.

The pet project is funded by private donors she has refused to disclose, and Lightfoot said the site is hosted on non-US servers to avoid censorship, according to Block Club Chicago.

The bank served her with the suit at her $900,000 home in the tony Wrightwood neighborhood in suburban Chicago. AFP via Getty Images

Under Lightfoot’s leadership in Chicago, the city saw skyrocketing crime and the decimation of its posh “Miracle Mile” shopping district, which reached a 30% vacancy rate after a string of looting incidents.

She also caught heat for blasting the “overwhelming whiteness” of Chicago’s media, and announced in 2021 she’d only be granting 1-1 interviews with minority journalists.