On Tuesday, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office announced it had dropped the 16 counts against Empire star Jussie Smollett. State’s Attorney Kim Foxx recused herself from the case, but the prosecutor who dropped the case reports to her. A Chicago police union rep told PJ Media that Foxx was behind the decision to drop the charges, and this represents merely one more example of her throwing the Chicago police “under the bus,” following the lead of former president Barack Obama.
“Once again, she’s throwing the Chicago Police Department completely under the bus, which she’s been doing for the last two years in office,” Martin Preib, second vice president at the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), told PJ Media on Tuesday. He argued that Foxx had never truly recused herself from the case, since her “underlings” remained involved.
“What’s the difference between her recusing herself and her underlings having the case? What really has been recused here? Nothing,” Prieb declared.
Smollett told police that on January 29, masked white attackers wearing MAGA hats had screamed, “This is MAGA country!” before seizing him, putting a noose around his neck, and pouring an unknown bleach-scented liquid on him. His story fell apart as no video evidence of the alleged attack was captured, and two black men came forward, telling police Smollett paid them to orchestrate the hoax.
Smollett was eventually charged with 16 felony counts after reporting a hate crime hoax.
After the charges were dropped, he claimed, “I have been truthful and consistent on every single level since day one. I would not be my mother’s son if I was capable of one drop of what I’ve been accused of.”
Last week, Prieb told PJ Media many police doubted Smollett’s story from the get-go. Even so, he said he was not surprised when prosecutors dropped the charges on Tuesday, even though the evidence against the Empire star seems crystal clear.
“The weaponization of the criminal justice system that we saw under the Obama administration through to this Mueller investigation, this attack on Trump, Foxx falls right in line with that — undermining the criminal justice system and turning it into a political advocacy outpost for the left,” Prieb said.
The FOP has called for investigations of Foxx many times in the past. Just last week, it renewed those calls, highlighting Foxx’s early interference in the Smollett case.
Just days after Smollett gave his story to police, Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff, Tina Tchen, asked Foxx to contact the FBI and get the feds involved in the hate crime investigation. Foxx told Tchen she had reached out to Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, telling him to get the FBI involved.
“It seems a totally inappropriate thing to do, to ask a prosecutor to get involved in a case that early on,” Prieb told PJ Media last week.
Yet Foxx has a notorious history of letting criminals off the hook.
One particularly egregious example involved the vacating of two felony convictions for high-ranking Spanish Cobra gang member Ricardo Rodriguez in February. Eliminating the 20-year-old convictions paves the way for Rodriguez to avoid deportation and remain in the country, FOP representatives argued.
Prieb also mentioned two cases early in Foxx’s administration. Arturo DeLeon-Reyes and Gabriel Solache confessed to stabbing Mariano and Jacina Soto, murdering them and kidnapping their children. Yet Solache and DeLeon-Reyes claimed, like so many convicts, that they were victims of police misconduct, even though they pleaded guilty and confessed to the murders. The two were later released after Foxx’s office granted immunity to a police officer who testified against the department.
According to FOP’s reporting in 2017, Foxx received hefty political contributions from Arthur Loevy, one of the most powerful wrongful conviction law firms in Illinois.
Prieb also noted that one of the attorneys for Smollett, Patricia Brown-Holmes, also prosecuted three Chicago police officers for an alleged conspiracy against 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Foxx relentlessly attacked her predecessor, Anita Alvarez, for failing to charge the police involved, even though the officers were later acquitted.
Prieb argued that Foxx’s crusade against police to free criminals echoed the efforts of the Department of Justice under Barack Obama. Obama himself intervened in many high-profile cases of alleged police abuse against black men.
Tina Tchen represents another Obama connection to the Jussie Smollett case, since she was Michelle Obama’s chief of staff. Tchen has also been tapped to investigate the internal workplace of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a far-left smear factory that fired its co-founder amid scandal.
According to police sources, Foxx’s office said it was dropping charges against Smollett due to his “community service,” yet the actor has not performed any recent community service.
My #CPD tip says SA Kim Foxx’s office is dropping the charges against #JussieSmollett because “he already did community service”. It’s unclear when he actually did that community service.
— Rafer Weigel (@RaferWeigel) March 26, 2019
Even Mayor Rahm Emmanuel slammed the dropping of charges as a “whitewash of justice.”
Chicago Mayor Emanuel: 'Because of the judge's decision, none of [the] evidence will ever be made public. None of it. This is without a doubt a whitewash of justice.'
— Byron York (@ByronYork) March 26, 2019
Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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