a Better Bubble™
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The week before President Donald Trump unveiled bruising new tariffs that sent the stock market plummeting, a key official in the agency that shapes his administration’s trade policy sold off as much as $30,000 of stock.
Two days before that so-called “Liberation Day” announcement on April 2, a State Department official sold as much as $50,000 in stock, then bought a similar investment as prices fell.
And just before Trump made another significant tariff announcement, a White House lawyer sold shares in nine companies, records show.
More than a dozen high-ranking executive branch officials and congressional aides have made well-timed trades since Trump took office in January, most of them selling stock before the market plunged amid fears that Trump’s tariffs would set off a global trade war, according to a ProPublica review of disclosures across the government.
All of the trades came shortly before a significant government announcement or development that could influence stock prices. Some who sold individual stocks or broader market funds used their earnings to buy investments that are generally less risky, such as bonds or treasuries. Others appear to have kept their money in cash. In one case unrelated to tariffs, records show that a congressional aide bought stock in two mining companies shortly before a key Senate committee approved a bill written by his boss that would help the firms.
Using nonpublic information learned at work to trade securities could violate the law. But even if such actions aren’t influenced by insider knowledge, ethics experts warn that trading stock while the federal government’s actions move markets can create the appearance of impropriety. The recent trades by government officials, they said, underscore that there should be tighter rules on how, or if, federal employees can trade securities.
“The executive branch is routinely engaged in activities that will move the market,” said Tyler Gellasch, who, as a congressional aide, helped write the law on insider trading by government officials and now runs a nonprofit focused on transparency and ethics in capital markets. “I don’t think members of Congress and executive branch officials should be trading securities. To the extent they have investment holdings, it should be managed by someone else outside their purview. The temptation to put their own personal self-interest ahead of their duties to the country is just too high.”
There is no evidence that the trades by government officials identified by ProPublica were informed by nonpublic information. Still, when government officials trade stock at opportune times, Gellasch said, even if it was based on luck and not inside information, it undermines trust in government and the markets
“It then becomes a thing where our markets look rigged,” he said.
In response to questions from ProPublica, the officials who made the trades either said they had no insider information that would help them time their decisions or did not respond to questions about the transactions.
Questions about trades based on nonpublic information have swirled around Congress for years and began anew after Trump’s tariffs announcements led to wild swings in the market. Lawmakers’ trades are automatically posted online and, after multiple congressional stock-trading scandals, are widely scrutinized as soon as they become public.
But less attention is paid to the trades of executive branch employees and congressional aides whose work could give them access to confidential information likely to influence markets once made public.
Last week, ProPublica reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares of Trump Media, the president’s social media company, on April 2. After the market closed that day, Trump unveiled his “Liberation Day” tariffs, sending the market reeling. Bondi’s ethics agreement required her to sell by early May, but why she sold on that date is unclear. She has yet to answer questions about the trades, and the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Earlier this week, ProPublica reported that Sean Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary, sold shares in almost three dozen companies on Feb. 11, two days before Trump announced plans to institute wide-ranging “reciprocal” tariffs. A Transportation Department spokesperson said Duffy’s account manager made the trades and that Duffy had no input on the timing.
Using insider government information to buy or sell securities could violate the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, or STOCK, Act. But no cases have ever been brought under the law, and some legal experts have doubts it would hold up to scrutiny from the courts, which in recent years have generally narrowed what constitutes illegal insider trading.
Thousands of government employees are required to file disclosure forms if they sell or buy securities worth more than $1,000. In many cases, the records are available only in person in Washington, D.C., or through a records request. The documents do not include exact amounts bought or sold but instead provide a broad range for the totals of each transaction.
ProPublica examined hundreds of records for trades shortly before major tariff announcements or other key government decisions. Trump, of course, repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he intended to institute dramatic tariffs on foreign imports. But during the first weeks of his term, investors were not panic selling, seeming to assume that his campaign promises were bluster. Several tariff announcements by Trump early on shook the markets, but it wasn’t until he detailed his new tariffs on April 2 that stocks dived.
Among those who sold securities before one of Trump’s main tariff announcements was Tobias Dorsey. Dorsey, a lawyer in the executive branch since the Obama administration, was named acting general counsel for the White House’s Office of Administration in January, when Trump was inaugurated. The division provides a range of services, including research and legal counseling across the president’s staff, including the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which helps craft trade policy. In his LinkedIn bio, Dorsey describes his duties since 2022 as giving “expert advice on a wide range of legal and policy matters to help White House officials achieve their policy goals.”
On Feb. 25 and 26, disclosure records show, Dorsey unloaded shares of an index fund and nine companies, including cleaning products manufacturer Clorox and engineering firm Emerson Electric. The total dollar figure for the sales was between $12,000 and $180,000. (He purchased one stock, defense contractor Palantir, which was selling for a bargain after recently plummeting on news of Pentagon budget cuts.)
At the time of Dorsey’s trades, investors were still largely in denial that Trump was going to go through with the massive tariffs he had promised during the campaign. But the next morning, Trump posted on social media that significant tariffs on Mexico and Canada “will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled” in several days, and that “China will likewise be charged an additional 10% Tariff on that date.”
The S&P 500, a stock index that tracks a wide swath of the market, fell almost 2% that day alone and ultimately dropped nearly 18% in six weeks.
In an interview, Dorsey said the sale was made by his wife from an account belonging to her. He said she decided to sell around $20,000 worth of shares so they could make tuition payments and that he had no nonpublic information on the impending tariff announcements. The kind of work he does as a career employee, he said, focuses not on public policy, but on how the White House operates, including personnel, workplace technology, contracts and records issues.
“I’m not advising Stephen Miller or Peter Navarro,” he said, referring to top policy advisers to the president. “I’m advising the people running the campus. … I don’t have access to any sensitive political information.”
Another well-timed set of transactions was made by Marshall Stallings, the director of intergovernmental affairs and public engagement for Trump’s Trade Representative. The office helps shape the White House’s trade policy and negotiates trade deals with foreign governments.
On March 25 and 27, Stallings sold between $2,000 and $30,000 of stock in retail giant Target and mining company Freeport-McMoRan. The sales appear to have been an abrupt U-turn. He had purchased the shares less than a week earlier. Days after Stallings’ sales, Trump unveiled his most dramatic tariffs. Target stock fell 17%. Freeport-McMoRan fell 25%.
Stallings and the Trade Representative’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A longtime State Department official, Stephanie Syptak-Ramnath, who until April was ambassador to Peru, also appeared to make a bet against the stock market. On March 24 and 25, she sold between $255,000 and $650,000 in stocks, and bought between $265,000 and $650,000 in bond and treasury funds (along with $50,000 to $100,000 in stocks). Then, on March 31, two days before Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement, she sold between $15,000 and $50,000 of a broad-based stock fund. When the market started to plummet, she bought back the same dollar range in another stock fund. Syptak-Ramnath said she did not have any information about the administration's decisions beyond what was publicly available. The trades, she said, were “undertaken as a result of family obligations” and in “response to a changing economy.”
A second longtime State Department official, Gautam Rana, who is now ambassador to Slovakia, sold between $830,000 and $1.7 million worth of stock on March 19, a week before Trump declared new tariffs on cars and two weeks before his “Liberation Day” announcement. The shares he sold were largely broad-based index funds. Rana declined to comment for this story.
Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer, said executive branch employees who don’t have nonpublic information and want to trade stock should consult with ethics officials before doing so, thereby allowing an independent third party to assess their actions.
“If you trade and you don’t seek advice in advance, you kind of do it at your own risk, and if you’re asked about it, you have to hope there aren’t factors that make someone question your motivations,” Canter said. “If you seek ethics official advice, you have some cover.”
Executive branch employees are barred from taking government actions that would narrowly benefit them personally, and some are required to sell stock in companies and industries they have purview over in their jobs. But like members of Congress, they are allowed to trade securities.
Since Trump’s tariff announcements and walkbacks began causing fluctuations in the market, questions have been raised about whether anyone has profited off advance notice of the moves. After Trump unexpectedly rolled back some of his tariffs in early April, causing stocks to surge, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned on social media that “any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene bought between $21,000 and $315,000 of stock the day before and the day of the announcement. In a statement, Greene said a financial adviser controls her investments: “Since my portfolio manager makes my trades for me, I usually find out about them when the media asks.”
ProPublica’s review of disclosures also found trades by congressional aides that took place before the market tumbled.
Michael Platt, a veteran Republican staffer who served in the Commerce Department during Trump’s first term and now works for the House committee that handles administrative matters for the chamber, restructured his portfolio in March. An account under his wife’s name sold off between $96,000 and $390,000 in mostly American companies, and purchased at least $45,000 in foreign stocks and at least $15,000 in an American and Canadian energy index fund. Some stock forecasters considered international markets a relatively safe haven if Trump went through with his tariffs. Platt did not respond to requests for comment.
Stephanie Trifone, a Senate Judiciary Committee aide, sold stock in mid-March and bought at least $50,000 in treasuries. A spokesperson for the committee’s Democratic minority said Trifone had no nonpublic information about the tariffs and her trades were conducted by a financial adviser without her input. Kevin Wheeler, a staffer for the Senate Appropriations Committee, made a similar move. In late February, he and his spouse offloaded between $18,000 and $270,000 in funds composed almost entirely of stocks and bought between $50,000 and $225,000 in bonds. A spokesperson for the Appropriation Committee’s Republican majority said Wheeler had no nonpublic information about Trump’s tariff plans and that a financial planner made the trades after advising Wheeler to take a more conservative approach with his portfolio.
Another staffer, Ryan White, chief of staff to Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, bought shares worth between $2,000 and $30,000 in two precious metals mining companies two days before Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement. He continued buying more shares in the companies, Hecla Mining and Coeur Mining, in the following days.
Precious metals can be a safe haven during a bear market turn, but those stocks, like the rest of the market, declined after Trump’s tariff announcements.
Two days after White’s last purchase in April of the mining companies’ shares, however, the firms got some good news. A bill White’s boss introduced to make it easier for mining companies like Hecla and Coeur to operate on public lands was approved by a Senate committee, an important step in passing a bill. (White added to his Hecla shares earlier this month and sold his stake in Coeur.)
White told ProPublica that “all required reporting and ethics rules were followed.” Any suggestion that the committee passing the bill played a role in his stock purchases “is a stretch and patently false,” he said, adding that the legislation “has not become law and even if it does, would take decades to have any appreciable impact.”
Update, May 22, 2025: This story has been updated to include a statement from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
A team of reporters from the nonprofit journalism organizations Invisible Institute and ProPublica have reviewed more than 300 sexual assault and misconduct complaints that were filed over the past decade against Chicago police officers.
But experts say that’s likely an undercount.
We need your help to understand the scope and scale of this issue. We want to talk to people who have experienced sexual misconduct or sexual assault by Chicago police. For this investigation, we defined police sexual misconduct as sexual assault, unwanted, inappropriate touching or comments, and sexual harassment by police officers either on or off duty. Researchers and advocates say sexual misconduct is a “spectrum of behavior.”
This behavior can include but is not limited to:
You can share your experience in the form below. Please also get in touch if you are a current or retired Chicago police officer who has information you can share on this issue.
If you prefer to speak with a reporter directly, you can contact the reporting team by calling or texting 312-488-9552. You can also send a message to reporter María Inés Zamudio on Signal, which is more secure, at mizamudio.95.
We appreciate you sharing your story and we take your privacy seriously. We are gathering this information for the purposes of our reporting, and we will contact you if we wish to publish any part of your story.
As journalists, our role is to write about issues. We cannot provide legal advice or other support. However, there are resources available. We know these cases can stem from painful experiences, and support is available if you need it:
Andrew Fan, Maheen Khan, Maira Khwaja and Trina Reynolds-Tyler of Invisible Institute contributed reporting, and Ashley Clarke of ProPublica contributed research.
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Invisible Institute and co-published with the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
Alexus Byrd-Maxey had just finished her second month at the Chicago police academy, well on her way to fulfilling her childhood dream.
The South Side native wanted to become a detective so she could bring closure to families who have lost loved ones to homicides by arresting those responsible.
Byrd-Maxey, then 26, was proud of herself for making it this far: completing college classes, applying to the academy multiple times, passing a background check and physical tests. She was delighted to be part of the academy despite the sacrifices it required, including leaving her toddler son most mornings at 5 a.m. and having her mom spend thousands to buy her new uniforms and equipment.
“Actually sitting in those chairs at the academy was very rewarding,” she said.
But on March 17, 2023, an encounter with a fellow recruit derailed that dream. On that day, she was leaning over a classmate’s computer, helping him log on to do their lesson. As another recruit walked behind her, she said she felt his hands on her waist and his body pressed up against her. He was close enough, she told reporters, that she felt “his penis on my butt.”
She recalled that she confronted him immediately — hoping to hear remorse in his voice. Instead, she said, she saw him smirk.
“That’s when I knew,” she said. “You’re not sorry.”
Help Us Report on Sexual Assault and Misconduct by the Chicago Police Department
In the days that followed, Byrd-Maxey wrestled with how to report her fellow recruit, a man named Eric Tabb, or whether to let it go.
At the same time, police department investigative records show, Tabb started telling other recruits that Byrd-Maxey had overreacted and that he had only tapped her on the shoulder so he could get to his seat.
The following week, when Byrd-Maxey reported the incident to her class leader, he talked to fellow recruits and they downplayed the encounter. A recruit who allegedly witnessed the incident and was friends with Tabb later told investigators that Byrd-Maxey was “trying to victimize herself.”
The academy instructor never filed a sexual misconduct complaint. Two and a half weeks later, Byrd-Maxey was fired from the academy for supposedly cursing and using gang language — allegations she has denied. Tabb soon became an officer and began patrolling streets.
But he didn’t last long.
Eight months after Byrd-Maxey was fired, Tabb was arrested for allegedly grabbing a fellow officer’s genitals repeatedly over her uniform after roll call in their police precinct.
That woman, too, had been in the academy with Byrd-Maxey. Two additional female recruits also have said Tabb assaulted them, and witnesses allege yet another was assaulted but did not report it, meaning five of 17 women in his academy class have given similar accounts, investigative files show.
Tabb now faces multiple felony charges, including aggravated criminal sexual abuse.
He has pleaded not guilty, and the criminal case is ongoing. He declined to comment.
Police department records, including interviews and investigative files obtained by the Invisible Institute and ProPublica, together with court records, highlight how police officials failed to intervene while Tabb was at the academy and head off potential harm to other women.
Reporters identified 14 officers who disciplinary records suggest may be repeat offenders, having been accused of sexual assault in the last decade and of at least one other incident of sexual misconduct. Five of those officers faced criminal charges and were convicted, in some cases pleading to a lesser offense that was not a sex crime, and three others have ongoing criminal cases.
In reviewing more than 300 sexual misconduct and assault complaints against Chicago police officers, the Invisible Institute and ProPublica found a pattern of the department failing to vigorously investigate accusations of sexual assault by officers, whether those complaints were lodged by fellow cops or members of the public. The claims were often downplayed or ignored, sometimes allowing officers to abuse again and again.
A 2017 U.S. Department of Justice investigation into Chicago police found officers frequently minimized the seriousness of sexual misconduct accusations against colleagues and didn’t employ best-practice investigative techniques. Police, the investigation found, closed cases without conducting full investigations.
Police spokesperson Don Terry declined requests for an interview but said in a statement that the department “takes all allegations of sexual assault seriously, including allegations against CPD members.” He said the department has “zero tolerance for sexual misconduct and any member in violation will be held accountable.”
He also said the department works with victim advocacy groups “to assist in the appropriate reporting of sexual assault allegations against department members in a way that eliminates barriers to reporting and provides support services to the survivors.”
That Tabb allegedly assaulted women while training to become a police officer is particularly troubling. The police academy is where aspiring officers learn the department’s culture. Recruits get their first lessons in how officers should behave in uniform — and out of it. They also have fewer job protections while undergoing their academy training, so they can be easily dismissed if they break the rules. Four other academy recruits have filed sexual misconduct or harassment complaints in the last four years. Records show three of the complaints ended in no discipline for the accused officer and one is still ongoing.
“I think of it as behavior that you’re sort of taught in the first few years on the job, starting with your field training officer, what you can get away with,” said Philip Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University who has done extensive research on police misconduct and created a national database of officer arrests. “They learn that it’s accepted behavior within that culture, within that squad, or that shift, quite often. And I do think that it’s behaviors that escalate.”
In June 2023, a little over two months after Byrd-Maxey was kicked out of the academy, the department implemented its first sexual misconduct policy, one it had been working on before she began her training.
Former Chicago police Officer Eric Tabb walks out of a Chicago courthouse after a hearing. He faces multiple charges, including aggravated criminal sexual abuse. (Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica) A Pattern of Missed OpportunitiesThe Chicago Police Department has a long history of failing to identify and deal with patterns of troubling behavior within its ranks.
Officers who stole from suspects were able to do so repeatedly before getting caught. Detectives who coerced confessions, sending innocent people to prison and costing the city tens of millions of dollars in legal settlements, did so without ever being disciplined. And some cops who abused and tortured Chicagoans did so for years before they were stopped.
This failure of the department to police its own officers has also had devastating consequences for people who have accused officers of sexual assault or harassment.
In 2019, then-Superintendent Eddie Johnson praised the department’s internal investigation of 13-year police veteran Officer Corey Deanes, who had been accused of sexual misconduct by four women. He called it a “testament to our ability to police ourselves.”
But what Johnson didn’t mention was that the department allowed Deanes to police the city’s streets for nearly a year despite two allegations of sexual misconduct. It took the city’s civilian police oversight agency to identify his behavior and stop him.
Deanes was suspended for seven days in 2011 for sexually harassing a woman during a traffic stop. He insisted on getting her phone number, then called or texted nearly 30 times. He told investigators he had no official reason to pull the woman over but did so because he wanted to talk to her.
Six years later, in August 2017, he again was accused of abusing his position while pulling over a 23-year-old woman during a traffic stop. Deanes, according to internal affairs records, made inappropriate comments to her and threatened to write the woman a ticket if she did not give him her phone number. Then Deanes allegedly hugged her and, though she resisted, touched her buttocks before leaving without giving her a ticket.
The woman reported the incident to the Chicago police and to the Independent Police Review Authority, the civilian oversight agency at the time. Police records and a lawsuit brought by the woman indicate it took police investigators more than a year to interview her, and the department lost an opportunity to get Deanes off the streets. The city settled the woman’s lawsuit for $100,000.
In July 2018, another Chicago woman reported Deanes. She had called 911 for help after arriving home late at night and finding a stranger on her porch. Deanes, who responded to the call, allegedly asked her personal questions, commented on her body and touched her inappropriately, according to internal affairs records.
“I felt so violated,” the woman, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told Invisible Institute and ProPublica. “I called you for help and I got harassed. That is not OK.”
The woman reported the incident to the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, the latest iteration of the review board. Launched in 2017 as part of a wider series of reforms, COPA and its new leaders hoped to bring an additional focus to investigating claims of domestic violence and sexual assault committed by officers.
Yet another woman filed a complaint against Deanes two weeks after the incident with the 911 call. This time, COPA identified a pattern. Andrea Kersten, then COPA’s head of investigations, notified the police department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs about the three incidents and pushed for a criminal investigation.
Deanes was arrested in May 2019 and charged with two misdemeanor counts of battery, one felony count of aggravated battery, and three felony counts of official misconduct for the three separate incidents. He pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of misdemeanor battery in 2020 and received two years probation. He was stripped of his Illinois state certification, preventing him from working as a cop.
A letter from the Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs outlining the allegations against then-Officer Corey Deanes and suggesting his case be closed after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery in 2020. (Obtained by Invisible Institute. ProPublica redacted identifying information for the sending, receiving and approving officers; other redactions original.)The woman who encountered Deanes after the 911 call said she’s disappointed that it took so long for the department to take action. “Police will have each other’s backs no matter what heinous things they do,” she said.
Deanes declined to comment for this story.
COPA has taken steps to improve its handling of sexual misconduct cases to identify officers who repeatedly engage in misconduct. Under Kersten’s leadership, the agency created a Special Victims Squad of trained investigators in 2019 to pursue these cases, including those with limited evidence beyond the accuser’s word. COPA also entered into an agreement that allowed other agencies to conduct joint interviews with victims to enhance collaboration and to reduce the risk of retraumatizing victims by limiting retellings of their assault.
Kersten stepped down as the head of COPA in February after facing a possible no-confidence vote from an oversight board and ongoing lawsuits against Kersten and COPA. A lawsuit filed by the Fraternal Order of Police, the union representing Chicago police officers, alleged that COPA and Kersten have exhibited an anti-police bias that unfairly affects investigations and how officers are disciplined. A federal judge dismissed the suit in April.
Kersten declined to comment for this story, but in her resignation letter she disputed the claims against her. COPA’s interim chief administrator said the agency remains committed to pursuing investigations of sexual misconduct.
“We are working on growing our SVS section to a fuller unit with more staff who will receive specialized training to handle these investigations,” the administrator, LaKenya White, said in a statement.
While COPA participated in the investigation into Byrd-Maxey’s claims, internal affairs led the criminal investigation into the matter.
The Chicago Police Education and Training Academy (Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica) “I’m Not Going Nowhere.”Last fall, Alexus Byrd-Maxey had come to accept what she called God’s will — that she would not become a Chicago police officer.
Since being fired from the academy, she had struggled with depression and anxiety as she tried to rebuild her life. She went back to work as a waitress at a North Side restaurant. Yet every time she saw her police uniforms hanging in her closet, she grieved a life she would never have.
“I feel like I was stripped away from it,” she said.
She thought she was doing the right thing in reporting Tabb, whether he was disciplined or not.
Byrd-Maxey’s police equipment and uniform from her time as a police recruit (Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica)It wasn’t long after Byrd-Maxey tried to alert the academy about Tabb that a second incident occurred. At the end of August 2023, Tabb attended a birthday celebration at a Wrigleyville bar with other recruits. He joined a female recruit on the dance floor and, according to investigative reports and court records, touched her breast, buttock and crotch over her clothes and also grabbed her face and tried to kiss her. He was so aggressive, a witness told investigators, that a mutual friend had to intervene to get him away from the recruit.
A few days later, according to investigative files and court records, Tabb attended a “star party,” an unofficial celebration for graduating recruits receiving their badge number. Another recruit told investigators he saw Tabb grabbing a third female recruit’s genitals over her clothes. The recruit’s boyfriend confronted Tabb, according to a witness. That same night, Tabb touched a fourth recruit’s buttocks, according to interviews with police investigators and court records.
In the immediate aftermath, the three women said nothing, and soon Tabb was officially on the force.
After about three months, a fifth female officer accused Tabb of touching her crotch over her uniform several times when she stood up after roll call to adjust her duty belt.
The woman went to her supervisor despite her fears. “I was afraid that any type of confrontation or anything would not work out for me,” she later told investigators. “I felt powerless,” the woman said, crying.
She said Tabb grabbed her crotch a second time.
“He sat back in his chair and he had a slight smile on his face with his hand up to his chin,” she said in a recorded interview with investigators. “It looked to me like, I don’t know, like he was proud of what he did.”
During the investigation into that incident, officials uncovered the allegations against Tabb that involved his off-duty behavior toward recruits. Two of the three recruits stepped forward to report Tabb’s behavior because they said they wanted to support the final alleged victim.
An internal affairs report outlining the investigation into Tabb’s first alleged assault. (Obtained by Invisible Institute. ProPublica redacted identifying information for the sending and receiving officers and those who reported and received reports of the incident; other redactions original.)Even though Byrd-Maxey had been the first to report his behavior, no one contacted her for 15 months about the criminal case against Tabb. When she learned about it, she decided to attend his next court hearing.
On a Tuesday morning in March, Byrd-Maxey entered the busy Cook County criminal courthouse with her mom, Jauntaunne Byrd-Horne. They walked past the black Doric columns and the tall golden lamps on their way to a courtroom, where a hearing was scheduled in Tabb’s case. For the first time in nearly two years, she was going to see him.
Her mom made herself a T-shirt to ensure her daughter’s pain was acknowledged. In bold white letters against a black background, the front of the shirt read: “What about Tabb’s first police academy victim 03/17/2023?”
Byrd-Maxey and her mother sat in the courtroom’s first row. A few minutes later, Tabb arrived with his parents and sat behind them.
At issue was a request from prosecutors asking to have the additional allegations related to off-duty incidents considered as evidence of a pattern of behavior: similar victims, similar assaults. Dan Herbert, Tabb’s defense attorney, said his client was innocent. He tried to blame Byrd-Maxey for the claims involving all the off-duty recruits, implying she had a grudge against Tabb.
Byrd-Horne, left, and Byrd-Maxey stand outside the George N. Leighton Criminal Courthouse after a March hearing in the case of former police Officer Eric Tabb. (Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica)Records show that before she was fired, Byrd-Maxey tried to report Tabb multiple times. She talked to her class leader — a fellow recruit who is put in a leadership position — on the Monday following the Friday incident. Records show the class leader discussed the incident with superiors and placed more emphasis on Tabb’s version, which was supported by other recruits. No one filed an official complaint.
Almost three weeks later, conflict erupted in class. Byrd-Maxey claimed Tabb verbally attacked her, and Tabb accused her of doing the same, records show. After class, Byrd-Maxey said, she went to her instructor to tell him about the incident in the computer lab.
Byrd-Maxey was fired the next day, accused of saying “shut your bitch ass up” in class and using gang-related language. Though their names were redacted, investigative files show seven recruits, including Tabb, filed complaints against Byrd-Maxey for engaging in this behavior. She denies the allegations.
The next day, Byrd-Maxey returned to the police academy to file the sexual misconduct complaint herself. She also accused two instructors of wrongful termination. During that investigation, several recruits sided with Tabb, including three who told investigators they were in the computer lab at the time.
By the time internal affairs cleared Tabb of Byrd-Maxey’s complaint on Sept. 20, 2023, he had allegedly assaulted three other women from his academy class.
During the court hearing, Tabb’s attorney attacked the credibility of those officers for not reporting the alleged abuse the moment it happened.
“They’re police officers. They have a duty to report misconduct,” Herbert said. “And they’re probationary police officers, which as the court well knows, they can be fired for any reason, unless it’s an illegal reason. They can be fired for not reporting misconduct. I think that’s what happened in this case.”
After the hearing, Byrd-Maxey spotted Tabb in the courthouse lobby. She locked eyes with him as their paths crossed.
“I’m here. I’m not going nowhere,” she said afterward.
Byrd-Maxey and her mother embraced outside the courthouse, an acknowledgment of the toll reporting Tabb had taken on them both.
Yet she doesn’t regret it.
“I wouldn’t change anything, even though it cost me mentally and financially,” she said. “I wouldn’t change it because, at the end of the day, I had the right motive to be heard and to avoid this from happening again.”
MethodologyInvisible Institute reporters spent over a year identifying allegations of sexual assault and sexual misconduct by Chicago police officers, then created a database from those allegations. We reviewed hundreds of complaints obtained through public records requests and a lawsuit.
Reporters obtained investigative files from the Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, and its predecessor agency, the Independent Police Review Authority. Reporters read the original investigative files, examined evidence and reviewed lawsuits, court records and media accounts.
The Invisible Institute and ProPublica compiled a dataset of more than 300 complaints after excluding dozens of cases where body camera footage contradicted the allegation, where non-police witnesses affirmed the police account, or where a secondhand allegation was not corroborated.
This investigation would not be possible without previous litigation that pushed for disciplinary records to be open to the public despite resistance from the city. Those lawsuits include Bond v. Utreras, Green v. Chicago Police Department and Kalven v. Chicago, which was brought by Jamie Kalven, founder of the Invisible Institute, and led to the publication of police misconduct complaints on the Civic Police Data Project site.
This story was published with the support of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights, in conjunction with Arnold Ventures.
Andrew Fan, Maheen Khan and Isabelle Senechal of the Invisible Institute contributed reporting and data analysis. Mariam Elba of ProPublica contributed research and Agnel Philip of ProPublica contributed data analysis.
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