CHICAGO — Billionaire and Democratic megadonor Michael Sacks sent a cease and desist letter to a company paying social media influencers for videos discussing his involvement in Chicago politics, documents obtained by the Chicago Tribune show.

Sacks sent the letter Sept. 14 to Good Influence, an advertising firm that specializes in connecting clients with social media influencers who create videos.

The company solicited “false, misleading and defamatory statements” that threaten to harm Sacks’ reputation, his attorney, Ed Siskel, said in the letter sent to Good Influence CEO Stuart Perelmuter and President Josh Cook.

Siskel demanded the company immediately stop “soliciting, ghostwriting, financing, publishing, or republishing any false or misleading statements concerning Mr. Sacks.”

Sacks spokesperson Becky Carroll called it unsurprising that there is a paid influencer campaign targeting Sacks.

“It is not organic and is rife with lies and defamation,” Carroll said.

Sacks, the CEO of investment firm GCM Grosvenor, has long been a fixture in Chicago politics. He served as a top adviser to former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, has played a key role in advancing Democratic causes, including gun control, and led the committee tasked with fundraising for the 2024 Democratic National Committee in Chicago.

But the Democratic donor recently has become a top focus for Chicago’s political left, who have panned him for policies they argue have damaged poor Black and Latino neighborhoods. With his cease and desist letter, Sacks fired back at the criticism behind closed doors.

Good Influence has at least once solicited posts from influencers aimed at criticizing Sacks. In a July “creative brief” obtained by the Tribune, the company sought posts aimed at boosting the campaign of Hilario Dominguez, a candidate for Chicago Board of Education president who until recently served as the Chicago Teachers Union’s political director.

The solicitation repeatedly mentioned Sacks under proposed “topline messaging,” citing his close ties to Emanuel’s administration, which oversaw the closure of 50 schools across the city. It told would-be social media influencers that Sacks “pledged to spend endlessly” to prevent Dominguez from winning the school board presidency. It also stated a requirement that any partnership be clearly disclosed.

“Why should every Chicagoan care? Because the billionaire answer to the deficit is closing schools, and when Chicago closes schools, it’s Black and brown neighborhood schools that get closed first. If that side wins, the schools we know and love will disappear,” the solicitation said.

Sacks’ letter specifically argued the “public smear campaign” is false by attributing school closures to him, asserting he was involved in displacing Black Chicagoans, claiming he had pledged to spend without limits on school board races and suggesting he “is part of a corrupt effort to buy the outcome of an election.”

The letter further suggested Johnson is playing into antisemitic tropes by attacking Sacks. “It also evokes well-worn and pernicious stereotypes that are not only false, but deeply offensive,” Siskel wrote.

The cease and desist letter comes as social media influencers play a new and increasingly large role in Chicago politics, at times with videos paid for with campaign cash.

It also comes as Sacks faces increasing attacks from the city’s left that seek to tie him and the politicians he contributes to now to policies enacted when Emanuel was mayor.

Mayor Brandon Johnson repeatedly has criticized Sacks and even cast him as a central opponent in his own mayoral race when he announced his campaign earlier this month.

“If I wasn’t that powerful, why do they have to get money from Michael Sacks and corporate interests and billionaires and millionaires?” Johnson asked his crowd. “Because they want the fifth floor (back).”

Johnson also told the crowd other mayoral candidates have taken money “from AIPAC and Michael Sacks and corporate interests,” an effort to link Sacks to the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee that does not spend money in local races.

Sacks was one of several individual megadonors to a group of political action committees organized by AIPAC to spend heavily in Chicago-area congressional Democratic primaries, contributing $1.2 million the PACs. Separately, he has already contributed $500,000 to one of Johnson’s top opponents in the mayoral race, Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias.

Sacks also helped raise $10 million to launch Common Ground Collective, a group that has spent large amounts of money to oppose the mayor and his progressive allies, including with ads criticizing Johnson’s 2026 city budget plan. Sacks added more than $900,000 to the political coffers of Common Ground’s PAC earlier this month, according to Illinois State Board of Elections records.

Asked after his campaign-launch speech why he repeatedly singled Sacks out, Johnson called him a “source of pain” and blamed him for many Emanuel administration decisions, including school and mental health clinic closures.

“Is it not personal for the families that have lost under the type of administration that continues to disrupt the quality of life for working people?” Johnson said. “Whose feelings are we most concerned about, a billionaire and the ultra-rich, or working people?”

Johnson’s finger-pointing quickly drew condemnation from the Jewish United Fund, which called on the mayor to not “use Jewish Chicagoans as political foils” in a letter sent to him last week and later published in Crain’s Chicago Business. Johnson didn’t name any other mayoral candidates in his launch speech, even as he repeatedly referred to Sacks, the letter noted.

“What may have seemed like a politically convenient way to energize a supportive crowd was something far more serious,” the letter said. “Your remarks were dangerous and irresponsible, and they trafficked in a longstanding antisemitic trope about Jews and Jewish organizations wielding disproportionate political influence and control.”

It remains unclear precisely who is behind the videos that Sacks sought to prevent from being published with the cease and desist letter. It also remains unclear if the solicitation directly prompted any social media criticism of Sacks.

According to records obtained by the Tribune, Good Influence asserted indemnification rights to Mori Strategies, a Washington D.C.-based political consulting firm. The letter cited showed Mori Strategies contracted Good Influence for work.

Cook, the Good Influence president, said the company responded to the letter and “considers this matter closed.” He added that he “expressly denies” the assertion that Good Influence is liable for any purported false statement about Sacks. Cook did not respond to questions about whether Good Influence would honor the cease and desist letter, or whether the company even believes it is their responsibility to do so.

Weeks before Good Influence solicited videos for Dominguez referencing Sacks, the Chicago Teachers Union paid Mori Strategies for “professional services,” first for $23,543.34, then again for $33,455.79, according to campaign finance disclosures shared with the state elections board.

Asked about the social media campaign, CTU political coordinator Crystal Gardner likened Sacks to President Donald Trump and Elon Musk as men who “use their power to protect their wealth and their egos and think that their status entitles them to censor anyone who disagrees,” but did not directly respond to questions about funding.

“It’s sad to see men with so much power be crybabies,” Gardner said. “We’re not going to be silent when a man who doesn’t want to pay his taxes for schools uses that money to attack public education, our students, our union and our leadership in a playoffs halftime commercial and is now complaining he’s getting critiqued.”

Carroll characterized Gardner’s criticism as a “laundry list of more lies” after the union had been “caught red-handed once again lying to Chicagoans with fake paid influencer ads full of lies.”

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