Tom Pritzker
Thomas J. Pritzker is the billionaire executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels Corporation and chairman of the Pritzker family's business empire, whose 2011 correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein used the phrase 'secret society' (Epstein Files document EFTA02407727), establishing a parallel 'secret society' channel through Epstein independent of the Peter Thiel correspondence.
Thomas J. Pritzker (born June 6, 1950) is an American billionaire businessman, the executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels Corporation, and the chairman of the broader Pritzker family business empire. The Pritzker family's holdings span hotels (Hyatt), industrial manufacturing (Marmon Group/Trinity Industries), finance, and the philanthropic Pritzker Foundation, and the family's cumulative wealth places it among the wealthiest American business dynasties. Pritzker's correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein in 2011, documented in the EFTA releases as document EFTA02407727, used the phrase "secret society," establishing a second documented "secret society" channel through Epstein independent of the Peter Thiel correspondence.123
The Pritzker Family and the Hyatt Empire
The Pritzker family built its wealth across the twentieth century through a diversified holding structure anchored by Hyatt (founded by Pritzker's father Donald and uncle Jay in 1957), the Marmon Group industrial conglomerate, the Superior Bank (which failed in 2001 in an early instance of the securitization-driven banking collapses), and a range of venture and private-equity holdings. Thomas Pritzker succeeded his father and uncle as the principal executive of the family's business operations and took Hyatt public in 2009.1
The Pritzker family's philanthropic arm, the Pritzker Foundation, has funded the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago, the Pritzker Military Museum & Library, and a range of cultural and educational institutions in Chicago and nationally. J.B. Pritzker, Thomas's cousin, is the current Governor of Illinois and a prominent Democratic political figure. The family's political and philanthropic footprint spans both parties and multiple institutional sectors.1
The Epstein Correspondence and the "Secret Society" Email
The EFTA releases include document EFTA02407727, a 2011 correspondence between Pritzker and Jeffrey Epstein in which Pritzker used the phrase "secret society." Epstein's reply, per the document, was "Remind me next month." The document is indexed in the Epstein file aggregators and cited in the secondary reporting on the Epstein-Pritzker relationship. The correspondence is dated 2011, three years after Epstein's 2008 federal non-prosecution agreement.23
The Pritzker "secret society" email runs parallel to the Thiel-Epstein "secret society idea" correspondence (documented in EFTA01738574, dated February 2016). The two are independent channels: the Thiel correspondence records Epstein reporting that Thiel "LOVED the secret socieity [sic] idea," and the Pritzker correspondence records Pritzker himself using the phrase. Whether the two channels refer to the same "secret society" concept or to separate projects is not established in the primary documents. The 2011 Pritzker email predates the 2016 Thiel email by five years.24
The Pritzker-Epstein Relationship
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2023, on the basis of the Epstein calendars, that Pritzker was among the business figures who met with Epstein repeatedly in the post-2008-conviction period. Pritzker's meetings with Epstein occurred in the 2011-2014 window and included discussions that Pritzker's representatives framed as relating to philanthropic and business matters. The Wall Street Journal reporting placed Pritzker alongside William Burns, Noam Chomsky, and the former Goldman Sachs lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler in the group of establishment figures whose Epstein meetings were documented in the calendars.3
The Pritzker-Epstein relationship is the parallel establishment channel to the Thiel-Epstein relationship. Both channels run through Epstein in the post-2008-conviction period, both involve "secret society" language, and both connect Epstein to principals of major business and institutional networks (the Pritzker hotel-and-finance empire and the Thiel technology-and-defense empire respectively). The question of whether the two channels intersect, beyond the shared Epstein intermediary, is not documented in the primary sources currently available.234
Sources
- Hyatt Hotels Corporation, "Board of Directors: Thomas J. Pritzker," documenting his role as executive chairman (assumed 2004), the November 2009 IPO, and his Marmon Holdings chairmanship. https://investors.hyatt.com/governance/board-of-directors/ ↩
- EFTA02407727, Epstein Files Transparency Act release. The 2011 Pritzker-Epstein correspondence using the phrase "secret society," with Epstein's reply "Remind me next month." Documented in the Epstein file aggregators. ↩
- "Jeffrey Epstein's Private Calendar" series, Wall Street Journal, 2023, documenting the Pritzker-Epstein meetings from the Epstein calendars. ↩
- For the parallel Thiel-Epstein "secret society idea" correspondence, see EFTA01738574 (February 6, 2016) and the Peter Thiel and Thiel Influence Network pages. ↩
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