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Read this story for free. To continue reading, sign up for The Rundown and get unlimited access to WBEZ.org. Submit We won't share your information with outside organizations. Why am I seeing this? SHARE COPY LINK Share CLOSE Email Facebook Twitter Bluesky Print Newly released court records show the ex-wife of powerful Illinois State Sen. Michael Hastings accused him last year of elbowing her in the face in the presence of their small children and harassing, intimidating and threatening her in a series of text messages during their highly contentious divorce.The accusations surfaced publicly this week in Will County divorce court files unsealed at the request of WBEZ — over the repeated objections from lawyers for Hastings, a veteran Democratic lawmaker from the south suburbs. Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker called for Hastings to resign last month. That was after reports revealed Hastings’s then-wife told police he had physically assaulted her at their home in Frankfort in 2020.The unsealed divorce files provide more details about the alleged 2020 incident — which the state senator has denied — and also contain complaints of domestic violence and verbal abuse that had not been publicly known until now.Hastings, 42, resigned from the Senate Democratic leadership team in August, but he has continued running for another term in the Nov. 8 election against Republican challenger Patrick Sheehan.The divorce was among a series of personal and professional issues facing Hastings, who was first elected to the Illinois Senate a decade ago and had been angling for statewide office.Last month, WBEZ reported that Illinois taxpayers spent nearly $150,000 on a settlement and outside legal costs in a civil discrimination case filed against Hastings and the Illinois Senate by the lawmaker’s former top aide.And a veteran environmental lobbyist told WBEZ that Hastings yelled at her, pounded his hands on a table in a meeting and approached her in a menacing manner amid policy disagreements in Springfield in the past five years.The lobbyist, Jen Walling, said she would no longer lobby him, even as Hastings has remained chairman of the Illinois Senate’s important Energy and Public Utilities Committee. Hastings’s spokesman last month said Walling was “not being honest.” Hastings has not been charged with any crime, and in a statement Wednesday, his spokesman Ray Hanania said the senator denied all the accusations in the divorce case.“Sen. Michael Hastings has been on the receiving end of every type of personal and political attack and misrepresentation throughout this divorce, and each of the accusations are inherently false and just not true,” Hanania told WBEZ. “To use a family’s divorce in a political manner as it has been, to influence an election, is reprehensible.“Sen. Hastings continues to work tirelessly for his constituents throughout the South suburbs and will continue to defend his family and reputation from these baseless personal and political attacks.”Lawyers for Hastings’s ex-wife did not return messages.‘Michael cannot control his anger in front of the children’Hastings had managed to keep his divorce out of public view for more than a year. Hastings filed for divorce on June 21, 2021. Will County Circuit Court Judge Derek Ewanic agreed to the senator’s emergency motion to seal the whole court file the following month.The day before Hastings filed for divorce, Frankfort police say his wife Kathleen called officers because of a “verbal altercation.”She also told an officer that in November 2020, “Michael battered her, by placing her in a chokehold/neck restraint, and slammed her body into a door multiple times,” according to a copy of the police report obtained by WBEZ. In the newly unsealed divorce files, Kathleen Hastings provided further details regarding that alleged incident two years ago. Her lawyer wrote that Michael Hastings “slammed Kate’s head against the door leading to the garage multiple times and put her in a choke hold — all because she asked Mike where he was working that day,” according to a filing in the divorce case in October 2021.Kathleen Hastings alleged the assault took place at about 7 a.m. on Nov. 9, 2020, “in front of” one of their children and woke up their other child, according to the filing.“Not wishing to disrupt Mike’s political and social image, and frankly not knowing what to do, Kate did not report the abuse to the authorities at the time,” wrote Kathleen Hastings’s lawyer Brett Buckley.In the same court filing, Kathleen Hastings alleged that “Michael cannot control his anger in front of the children,” and the lawyer wrote that the senator “elbowed Kate in the face in front of the children.”She also alleged that her then-husband repeatedly used profane, misogynistic words “in front of the minor children” in the months after she called police on him and the divorce case was filed.‘You know exactly what you have to do’During the course of the divorce proceedings, Kathleen Hastings also...

Illinois State Sen. Michael Hastings’s unsealed divorce file shows another domestic abuse accusation