On Thursday, Chicago Police released thousands of investigative files from the Jussie Smollett hate hoax. Perhaps the worst aspect of that entire case was the dropping of 16 felony counts against Empire actor Jussie Smollett for lying to police and wasting important city resources. While Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx made a show of recusing herself from the case, her office dropped the charges. This week, Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff Tina Tchen tried to defend Foxx from a special prosecutor. New Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the case “doesn’t rank as a matter of any importance to me.”
“This is absolutely obscene,” Martin Preib, second vice president at the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), told PJ Media on Thursday. “The whole country’s upset about this fake crime. But the real horror of what’s going on in Chicago goes unreported.”
“Here’s the thing about the Foxx administration. Here’s the story that’s getting buried. Kimberly Foxx was supported heavily in her campaign by several law firms that make their living off of suing the police. She won, turns around, and lets all their clients out of prison to file million-dollar lawsuits.”
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.
Preib has long drawn attention to Foxx’s record of reversing felony convictions for confessed murderers and rapists. Foxx vacated 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.
Arturo DeLeon-Reyes and Gabriel Solache confessed to stabbing Mariano and Jacinta 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.
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.
Yet it seems Lightfoot is not interested in pursuing these cases or holding Foxx accountable.
“How disappointing it was that Mayor Lori Lightfoot wanted to turn the page on [Smollett], yet she is always demanding accountability and transparency for the police,” Prieb said.
The Smollett case is notable not just because the charges were dropped but because Smollett claimed to have been attacked by Trump supporters in “Make America Great Again” hats, yelling racial and homophobic slurs. “This is a terrible thing to claim against political opponents,” Prieb said. “This is as dirty as it can get. Is everybody going to be equal before the law under the Lori Lightfoot administration?”
Yet the FOP VP also attacked Tina Tchen. On Wednesday, Tchen’s lawyers defended Foxx by filing a motion to quash a subpoena. Sheila O’Brien, a retired Illinois appeal court judge, filed many legal demands, including a request for a judge to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Foxx.
“Can you believe how brazen these people are?” Prieb said of Tchen’s latest court action. “Unbelievable, the sense of entitlement and arrogance.”
Tchen is currently running an internal review into racism and sexual harassment claims against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a far-left smear factory that accuses conservative and Christian organizations of being “hate groups,” listing them along with the Ku Klux Klan.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center, all they do is hammer the police and try to make us into criminals,” Prieb said.
Yet Tchen also demonstrates a connection between Foxx and the Obama administration, one that Prieb insists is no coincidence.
“This was true with the entire Obama administration. They politicized the Department of Justice under the buzzwords of transparency and accountability,” just like Foxx. “It was mendacious.”
When it comes to Foxx’s corruption and the Smollett case, Preib said Lightfoot’s silence is damning. “How can Mayor Lightfoot be silent on that and talk about transparency and accountability?” he asked, bitterly.
Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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