Chicago City Wire

Radio host Dan Proft had sharp words for Kim Foxx upon her announced decision to not run for re-election for the Cook County State Attorney’s Office.

Foxx in comments made at the City Club bemoaned the fact she will be remembered more for bungling the Jussie Smollet case and rampant crime under her oversight than she will for assisting in the release of the wrongfully convicted.

“No one has any problem with exonerating people who are wrongly convicted,” Proft said on Chicago’s Morning Answer.

“That should happen. No one argues that there have been instances where police, Chicago police, have behaved badly. No one argues that there are not instances where we've had Chicago police officers who are corrupt, who are racist. But the idea that it is either you talk about exonerating people who were wrongly convicted or you ask her about Jussie is a false choice. It's the rhetorical device of the charlatan and Kim Foxx is a charlatan.”

“Here's an idea. You can both do your job to exonerate people wrongly convicted when there is exculpatory evidence that comes to your attention. You can do your job on that side because your job as a prosecutor is to follow where the law leads, to follow where the facts lead under the law. So that would certainly include the wrongly convicted. And you can not use your office to give a political pass to a political ally.”

“To give a pass to a political ally like you did with Jussie Smollett – and that's not me saying it, that’s a former U.S. attorney, Dan Webb, saying in his review of your ethical failures. Nothing illegal, he concluded, but your ethical failures as a Cook County State's Attorney, as prosecutor – that’s what Dan Webb concluded. So you can do all of that performative moral indignation, and you still can't get around the fact that you had a former U.S. attorney conclude you had engaged in ethical lapses, what the judgment calls you made in the Smollett case. And it was important not because the crime is some seminal crime, but because it goes to the race hustle that you run, just like Jussie Smollett was trying to run. That polarizes and divides and continues to exacerbate this problem.”

“Chicago has as the most segregated, de facto segregated big city, in the country. So there are implications beyond his hate crime hoax cultural ones. And you were a collaborator after the fact. And that brings shame on you and the office. And that's why it should be in your epitaph.”

Smollett's case, in which the actor was accused of orchestrating a "racist" attack on himself, was handled by Foxx, and she was charged with violating the "Code of Professional Responsibility" in doing so.

According to Foxx's office, she "recused" herself in a "colloquial sense" and was still involved in the case.

In that instance, the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission chose not to investigate Foxx.

Many people have argued that Foxx was fortunate to avoid being accused of prosecutorial misconduct in the case.

Foxx's office made numerous errors in looking into the issue, according to Special Prosecutor Dan Webb, but they will not face criminal charges.

“As a result of this investigation, the OSP (Office of the Special Prosecutor) has concluded that it did not develop evidence that would support any criminal charges against State's Attorney Foxx or any individual working at the CCSAO (Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office),” Webb said in August 2020.

Foxx penned a commentary to the Chicago Sun-Times on the Jussie Smollet case.

“Given the reputational price Smollett paid, the $10,000 bond we held, and the fact that he’d never been accused of a violent crime, my office made the decision not to further pursue a criminal conviction. This story should have ended there, as thousands upon thousands of non-prosecuted cases do every day,” Foxx wrote.

She blamed Smollet’s successful prosecution to a “mob.”

“In Smollett’s case, the mob was relentless, organized and effective. A judge appointed a special prosecutor with an unlimited budget to reopen the investigation into a nonviolent Hollywood actor, a complete disregard for the discretion that prosecutors must have to be effective and independent. As a former prosecutor, Dan Webb knows that prosecutors have that power, and more importantly, knows there is no “abuse of discretion” standard. In fact, the Supreme Court has recognized the “wide discretion” of prosecutors, and that courts should defer to the original prosecutorial decision. Webb knows this, and could refer to his friend Bill Barr’s own remarks,” she wrote.