Chicago City Wire

Political strategist Chris Robling is taking an aggressive stance on the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission's choice not to pursue an investigation into Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx over her handling of the Jussie Smollett case.

"Democrat-dominated ARDC betrayed all Cook County residents when it refused to hold licensed attorney Kim Foxx accountable for the transgressions Dan Webb found," Robling told Chicago City Wire. "We are in the middle of a national crime wave, and Webb found failures that go [against] the very integrity of our local prosecutor and her office. It’s a Democrat cover-up at the expense of crime victims. Yet another outrage." 

The Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission said it was not pursuing an investigation into Foxx’s bar license. The ARDC noted, "as a matter of policy, the ARDC does not review or direct the discretionary decisions of elected officials who may also be lawyers absent some clear indication of fraud, criminal activity or other serious misconduct by the lawyer-official." 

"Judging by this letter, it appears that elected officials who are also attorneys are immune from [an] investigation into their professional conduct unless it’s what the ARDC considers serious," Martin Preib, a former Chicago FOP spokesman, who previously contacted the ARDC, told Chicago City Wire. 

Former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Dan Webb wrote in a report that Foxx committed "serious abuses of discretion" in handling the Smollett criminal case. Foxx and her team also presented "conflicting stories" of who and why Foxx's administration negotiated their arrangement with Smollett, according to the investigation. 

Webb refused to answer a question from a Sun-Times reporter in December about whether he had transmitted his report to the Commission, and he also did not respond to a CCW inquiry about if he had filed a formal complaint.