Chicago City Wire

Kim Foxx’s announcement that she will not seek a third term in 2024 came just days after her office charged two teenagers who killed a child while speeding in a stolen car with mere misdemeanors. The negligible charges, which sparked outrage from the victim’s family, are an exemplar of what Foxx's critics say is her soft-on-crime approach to prosecuting -- to the point of absurdity.

There was the high profile Jussie Smollett case where in 2019 she dropped charges after the actor faked a hate crime, but there are thousands of lesser known examples from not prosecuting shoplifters to the exonerations of convicted murderers based on allegations (not evidence) of police torture, and along with those, not challenging the issuing of Certificates of Innocence (COIs), paving the way for millions in cash awards for them and their lawyers.

She has been at the top of the class of big city prosecutors funded by progressive billionaire George Soros.

in 2020, Soros donated $2 million to a PAC that backed Foxx in her re-election campaign, the Capital Research Center (CRC) recently reported.

“She won the race and has since offered deferred prosecutions and softball deals to criminals,” the report said.

The results in New York, Philadelphia and other cities with Soros prosecutors have been predictably the same: crime has shot up and people are moving out. 

The murder rate in Chicago has been the highest in 30 years.

One of the recent Chicago murders was of police officer Andres Vasquez Lasso near Gage Park in March. Charged in the crime was 18-year-old Steven Montano, who should have been locked up at the time. Last year, Montana was involved in a drive-by shooting, but was not charged.

“Last year Kim Foxx rejected aggravated battery charges requested by police against Montano,” Pat O’Brien, a 2020 candidate for State’s Attorney, wrote on March 3 on his “Pat O’Brien for Justice” Facebook page. “Montano was one of three offenders fleeing in a stolen car used in a drive-by shooting. Montano was arrested hiding under a porch. Only one of the 3 offenders was charged with aggravated battery. Under ‘accountability law’ each offender who ‘aids or abets' a crime can be charged and convicted.”

While campaigning for reelection in January, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot criticized Foxx for “handing out certificates of innocence like they’re candy,” the Chicago Tribune reported.

In one notorious case, Foxx’s office reversed its opposition to the granting of COIs to two convicted of the 1998 brutal murders of a husband and wife, and the kidnapping of their children.

City attorneys representing former Chicago police officers filed a motion in court to find out why Foxx’s office, reversed its position on convicted murderers Gabriel Solache and Arturo Reyes.

“There is no doubt in my mind, or the mind of anyone who has worked on this case, that Mr. Solache and Mr. Reyes are guilty of these crimes,” former assistant State’s Attorney Eric Sussman said to CBS Chicago when the charges against the two were dropped. “It is a tragic day for justice in Cook County.”

The exodus from Foxx’s office has been dramatic. In October, the Chicago Tribune reported that 235 have resigned since July 2021.

Former Cook County Assistant States Attorney Dan Kirk told Fox News that Foxx has “implemented policies that have made Chicago less safe, that have made people feel unsafe and emboldened criminals, and created this new level of in seeing brazenness among criminals that was unimaginable prior to her … tenure.”

"But I also think that her term in office of state's attorney has been an abysmal failure from the perspective of what it's done to the state attorney's office in recent years," he said. "The most senior people have all … left the office in this mass exodus, which has been unprecedented. She likes to blame it on COVID, except in every other prosecutor's office around Chicago and the other neighboring counties have either maintained their size or actually, in many cases, grown."

All along, Foxx has been protected by state law that makes it nearly impossible to remove a negligent prosecutor. And she has friends in Cook County Circuit Court, where a petition for removal would be sent.

In December 2021, special prosecutor Dan Webb asked the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) to investigate Foxx and her office over the handling of the Smollett case.

In a December 2021 WTTW Chicago Tonight interview, Webb said Foxx's office could not explain how it came to the decision to dismiss the original disorderly conduct indictment filed against Smollett, calling that move ‘massive confusion and an operational failure.'”

“To totally dismiss the entire case, require no plea of guilty by Mr. Smollett at all … just give him a complete pass so he can walk out on the street and say to Chicago: ‘Goodbye, I did nothing wrong and I’m out of here,’ after what he did to the Chicago Police Department, for that resolution to have occurred is a disgrace,” Webb said. “It is a disgrace and that’s what caused this whole thing.”

The ARDC could recommend that the state Supreme Court disbar Foxx if an investigation finds egregious misconduct. In that case, she would have to step down as state’s attorney.

It’s unclear where the ARDC investigation stands, or whether one is even underway.

A spokesman for the ARDC said for an earlier story only that he was aware of Webb’s request but couldn’t comment on whether an investigation was even started.