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Kim Foxx should resign as States Attorney
Jussie Smollett’s despicable conduct exploiting racism and anti-Gay hate to further his sagging career and to profit financially doesn’t even come close to the more serious issue the controversy has raised involving the failure of the Cook County Prosecutor Kim Foxx to do her job to protect the innocent from crime. Foxx should resign immediately
By Ray Hanania
Ray Hanania
If anything shows that Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is unqualified for public office, it is her flip-flop on the issue of her “recusing” herself in a hoax Jussie Smollett hoax fueled for political reasons before he was exposed as a liar.
Foxx is supposed to be Cook County’s highest legal expert, and yet she talks like she just flunked out of high school.
When question began to arise in the Smollett case, Foxx was lobbied by former First Lady Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff to not pursue charges against the “Empire” actor. Foxx defended herself and her office by stating clearly and forcefully that she had “recused” herself from the case.
Police officials from around the country criticized Foxx stating she can’t recuse herself from the case and she should never have interfered in justice. They said the entire office should have recused itself and handed the case to the Illinois Attorney General or another prosecutorial body.
Of course, turning this over to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul would have been another joke, too. Raoul has already proven his incompetence in pandering to racial constituencies to boost his popularity by seeking and then failing to have the nearly 7-year jail sentence given to Jason Van Dyke increased in the case of his killing of the armed drugged-up hoodlum, Laquan McDonald. Raoul wanted the sentence increased to 20 or 30 years but it was thrown out by the Illinois Supreme Court.
Foxx responded to her legal and unprofessional misstep by later explaining that she did not “formally” recuse herself. She did it in a “colloquial” sense.
That is probably the dumbest explanation I have ever heard any politician make to defend themselves against charges of incompetence. It’s worse because she is supposed to be the highest legal authority in Cook County.
The second most offensive aspect of the Jussie Smollett “O.J. Simpson” phenomena – race not justice drove his supporters – is Smollett himself asking that this case “not be tried in the public.”
Smollett has denied the accusations that were proven in a 16-count indictment handed down by a grand jury accusing him of hiring two people to stage a racist, anti-Gay attack so he could use the publicity to argue for more salary and a higher profile for his pathetic acting career. Smollett is the no-talent character in a “who-cares” FOX TV series called “Empire” that, seriously, no one watches.
But it was Smollett who took his case to the public, fanning the flames of political hatred, attacking President Trump and asserting that the two attackers had worn MAGA (Make American Great Again) hats. The attackers, he implied, were driven by Trump’s rhetoric to beat him and to place a rope around his neck in a sick reference to the racist period in which African Americans were lynched in the late 19thCentury and early 20thCentury.
Smollett is the one who lit the fuse and fanned the flames of public anger when he took his case to his sympathetic friend, Robin Roberts, the “news anchor” at ABC TV’s “Good Morning American” TV program. Roberts soft-balled questions to help Smollett appear even more sympathetic and missed the opportunity to expose him. But Smollett is Robin Roberts’ friend. And she clearly wanted to help him build public sympathy and to use it to fuel more anti-Trump hatred.
But then, the real facts started to come out. Smollett, it turns out, hired the two men, who were in fact African American, accused of the anti-Gay racist violence. Smollett paid them to “attack” him. Smollett stood tall on his lying soapbox and berated his “haters” and squeezed every drop of sympathy from the audience to make himself look like the righteous victim, and suddenly demanded that people give him privacy when it turned out that he was exposed as a despicable liar. I use the word despicable because that is the only way to describe someone who would take the racism and ant-Gay suffering of millions to benefit their own financial interests and career.
Foxx has the power to drop any case. She could have been a professional prosecutor and stood in front of reporters from day one and taken the heat, saying she felt the punishment was not worth the effort to prosecute.
But that would have been outrageous. Because before Smollett was exposed as the hoaxster liar that he is, Smollett and his racist cheering crowd were demanding justice against the racists, the Gay-bashers and the haters. It was a terrible crime, a felony level, one that took center stage not just in Chicago but nationally. Suddenly, when it turns out that Smollett lied and orchestrated the entire hoax, now suddenly it’s not a felony case? It’s not important?
Don’t expect any justice while Kim Foxx remains as the Cook County States Attorney. I fully expect Foxx will show sympathy to drug dealers, street gang members, and all kinds of criminals, if there is a racial political benefit for her. Rather than pursue justice, Foxx is pandering to a specific audience at the expense of justice.
There is a hope that Smollett will still face Federal prosecution for faking a note he sent to himself before the hoax, in which he threatened himself to make himself look like a victim. And, police professionals from around the country are demanding that Foxx step-down from her position and acknowledged her bias and that she is unqualified to represent the victims of crime. Chicago officials plan to file a lawsuit against Smollett to force hi to pay for the $130,000 in police expenses used to investigate his selfish hoax that could have been spent on defending crime victims.
Illinois has a terrible reputation as a corrupt state burden by the heaviest and worst taxes. Now, we are also known as the state that plays political with crime based on racial factors.
What a true, despicable shame.
(Ray Hanania is a former Chicago City Hall political reporter and now a syndicated opinion columnist. He hosts the “Ray Hanania on Politics” podcast. His personal website is www.Hanania.com. Email your comments to [email protected] or use Disqus to participate in a public discussion about this and other issues.)
(Originally published in the Southwest News Newspaper Group — Des Plaines Valley News, the Regional Newspaper, The Reporter Newspaper, the Southwest News-Herald newspaper.)
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Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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