Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has been working a lot of overtime as of late. She first covered for hate crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett, enraging Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the entire Chicago police force by unilaterally dropping all 16 felony charges against the disgraced, lying actor. She is now forced to do damage control to salvage her own career.
Last Friday, Foxx published a defense of her controversial call to drop the case against Smollett in the Chicago Tribune. Her defense relied mostly on garbage platitudes about fearmongering and blaming the police. She refused to address the fact that she colluded with Tina Tchen, Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff, who was working to exonerate Smollett, 13 days prior to “colloquially” recusing herself from the investigation. It’s mostly a worthless read, except for one interesting insight that explains why Foxx is fundamentally unfit to lead any prosecutor’s office, let alone one as important as Cook County’s.
Foxx writes:
Setting aside this blatant attempt to use the past misdeeds of the Chicago Police Department as a smokescreen for her own misconduct in office, Foxx exhibits a stunning disdain for the fundamental basis of justice in a liberal society. There’s a reason criminal cases aren’t posited as victims versus the accused. When Brock Turner sexually assaulted an unconscious woman, prosecutors didn’t build a case against him just to obtain justice for his victim, but to obtain justice for the people. Hence, the case was The People of the State of California v. Brock Allen Turner, not Jane Doe v. Turner.
Justice is supposed to be punitive in addition to preventative. In making examples of convicted criminals, we deter potential ones from acting in the future. Furthermore, if Smollett had issued an ounce of compunction, we could make the case that the public humiliation was sufficient punishment already, providing an example to those inclined to stage a hate crime in the future. But Smollett is not remorseful, and his surrogates are still gloating on cable news, not only that he got off but that he’s innocent. Just because you may not be “afraid” of Smollett doesn’t mean that letting him off without so much as an apology is any less dangerous to the state of justice than letting off any violent offender. The law only works if people believe it will be enforced and actually prosecuted.
“I was elected on a promise to rethink the justice system, to keep people out of prison who do not pose a danger to the community,” Foxx wrote. But even if Smollett himself will not commit any more crimes, the very fact that a hate crime hoaxer got off poses an immediate and direct danger to future victims of hate crimes who will not be believed. It empowers those who wish to commit such crimes, because there are now more hate crime truthers than there were before the Smollett case.
For what it’s worth, the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police is still up in arms. They staged a protest outside of Foxx’s office over the weekend and seem keen to take her career down for good.
The timing couldn’t be better. Next on her docket: the R. Kelly case. The sooner the end of Foxx’s career in public life, the better.
[Related: Embattled Chicago prosecutor Kimberly Foxx never legally recused herself from Jussie Smollett case]
