Kim Foxx Communicated With Her Team After Recusal From Jussie Smollett Case
She found the charges excessive, and called Smollett a “washed up actor.”
The ABC-I team in Chicago continues its great work investigating Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx after her office dropped 16 felony charges against actor Jussie Smollett.
Foxx recused herself from the case after she talked with Smollett’s family before the charges, but new texts show that she still communicated with her team, found the charges excessive, and called Smollett a “washed up actor.”
Foxx exchanged texts with her top assistant Joseph Magats about the case.
Check out this text message obtained by the @ABC7Chicago I-Team from State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to Joe Magats— the prosecutor running the Jussie Smollett case *after* her recusal. pic.twitter.com/NInWqEfDSC
— Ross Weidner (@RossWeidner) April 17, 2019
More of the Foxx and Magats texts here: pic.twitter.com/tQIhuGRr9q
— Ross Weidner (@RossWeidner) April 17, 2019
State’s Attorney Foxx’s office tells ABC7: pic.twitter.com/ZTYst2sT9c
— Ross Weidner (@RossWeidner) April 17, 2019
Smollett faced 16 felony counts after the Chicago Police Department determined he staged the racist and homophobic attack on himself on January 29.
Foxx’s office dropped the charges, but did not expect the backlash they received:
Texts between top-level prosecutors and its communications office show a scramble to coordinate their messaging and futilely try to tamp down the heated controversy.
“Just wish I could have anticipated the magnitude of this response and planned a bit better!” Assistant State’s Attorney Risa Lanier, the lead prosecutor on the high-profile case, texted Magats hours after the charges were dropped.
“There’s really no planning for this,” Magats responded. “It’s the right decision.”
“I agree and absolutely stand by the decision made,” Lanier replied.
Apparently a publicist in Smollett’s camp alerted the media, which left Foxx’s office scrambling to notify people. They told the CPD minutes before Smollett held a press conference and left.
Foxx said Superintendent Eddie Johnson “seemed satisfied with the explanation,” but he and other cops along with Mayor Rahm Emanuel held their own press conference where they lashed out at Smollett.
The CPD released the police investigation reports to show that they did not make up the allegations and how they pieced together their case.
Emanuel demanded Smollett pay back the city $130,000 to cover the costs of the investigation. When the deadline passed, the city filed a civil suit against Smollett.
Foxx and her office faced immediate criticism, but “denied outright requests for its internal files, saying it did so because the judge presiding over the case had agreed to seal the public court file moments after prosecutors dropped all the charges.”
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“Foxx and her office faced immediate criticism, but “denied outright requests for its internal files, saying it did so because the judge presiding over the case had agreed to seal the public court file moments after prosecutors dropped all the charges.”
I can think of a couple of people whose bank records should be investigated.
No she didn’t! She communicated with staff after “recusing in a colloquial sense”. Of course Johnson was satisfied with the explanation, his not-recused boss had expressed her will and he was submitting to it like a good employee.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/cook-county-states-attorney-kim-foxx-did-formally-recuse-herself-smollett-case-office-says
You all know I am not a lawyer, but I cannot comprehend how the net result is, at minimum, unethical as all hell.
And I probably should have written it “how is it not unethical” unfortunately…
More than unethical, I would like to see Foxx behind bars and deemed washed up.
All of these internal communications appeared to be staged to me…just part of the cover up.
This is fake!
Maybe so but when Foxx tweeted that Smollet is a “…Washed up celeb who lied to cops,” that’s not going to help Smollet fight the city’s lawsuit against him. I hope the city compels Foxx to testify against Smollet. And basically against herself that she knew he was guilty as sin.
And that she simply lied when she said she had recused herself. I don’t believe the Fifth Amendment applies as she won’t be on trial.
I had higher hopes for the Trump justice department as there should be a federal investigation into this. Perhaps there can be professional complaint and she can be disbarred, at least.
Foxx found them excessive? so reduce to a lower count…don’t drop them altogether.
Crooked and corrupt.
She could have dropped all the charges except one. And/or she could have offered him a plea deal if she thought the charges were excessive. She’s now accusing everyone of criticizing her of racism.
Well, racism was clearly at play here. But as it turns out all the black racists stuck together and let Smollet walk.
More evidence that Foxx didn’t recuse herself. It turns out her assistant state’s attorneys didn’t have the authority to drop the charges. Foxx couldn’t delegate that authority to them; only she had the authority. Someone linked to a letter issued by the Illinois Prosecutor’s Bar Association which pointed out that she did not recuse herself since she kept the prosecution in her office. Instead if a state’s attorney in Il recuses him/herself then a special prosecutor must be appointed and take over the prosecution.
But the why wasn’t in the letter. Only the state’s attorney has the legal authority to reduce charges by dropping some or all of them. Her assistants did not. So she committed an ethics violation by talking to Smollet’s family then lied about recusing herself and it must have been her who made the decision to drop the charges.
How this isn’t an ethics violation that should cause her to lose her law license I’ll never know.
The fix was in. Everyone KNOWS that. Was Smollett overcharged? Definitely. Should that justify dropping all charges? Definitely not.
Look, Foxx is an idiot. She thought that she could get away with this, because she is special. She bought into the identity politics creed that certain minorities are able to do whatever they want, because of their minority status. Well, she just learned that being Black does not trump the Chicago political machine.
Prosecutors, like plaintiff-side lawyers in the civil context, always “overcharge.” Allege however as many violations and legal theories as you have. That’s what you do.
Not always. A lot depends upon the judges before which a prosecutor has to appear. While not as common today as in decades past, there are still a number of judges who do not look kindly upon vicarious charges. I have seen a judge actually arbitrarily dismiss multiple similar charges against a defendant.
However, in most cases, a prosecutor will consolidate multiple charges into one or two. In Smollett’s case, it would have been a simple matter for Foxx’s office to consolidate the 16 charges into one and then allow Smollett to plead guilty to an included misdemeanor and have him sentenced to a fine, community service and have adjudication withheld, upon his satisfaction of his sentence. Ironically, few people would have said anything.
A misdemeanor is not sufficient deterrence for this sick practice. I don’t think people would have been happy with that outcome.
Obviously it wasn’t a recusal-recusal but rather just a recusal.
Makes all the difference.
Kind of like it depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.
Wasn’t there a Michelle Obama connection involved in this too?
Foxx will dutifully crawl under the bus in order to hide that fact (if it is indeed a fact).
YES.
Sort of. Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff intervened on the behalf of Smollet. But there has been nothing that ties Michelle Obama to this matter afaik
Oh, yes there is. Smollett’s sisters (one of them named Jurnee) worked in the Obama WH.
Jussie knows the Obamas. Apparently he’s visited the WH several times and performed on stage with Michelle Obama.
https://i0.wp.com/truepundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Dzq427-UYAA9vEM.jpg?fit=450%2C322&ssl=1
Here’s Jussie with both Obamas and his older brother Jojo.
This goes higher than Michelle Obama’s chief of staff. The CoS was just acting as a go between for the Obamas.
I forgot to include the link.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailv2&form=EDGEIN&iss=sbi&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FDWclCv4U8AA3RMK.jpg%3Alarge&selectedindex=0&id=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FDWclCv4U8AA3RMK.jpg%3Alarge&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FDWclCv4U8AA3RMK.jpg%3Alarge&exph=0&expw=0&vt=0
I got the pic off of Jussie Smellit’s twitter account.
I was afraid he’d be sanitizing his twitter account so I did a Bing image search to find a link he can’t delete. Which is why the link is so long.
Here’s how the hate crime hoaxer captioned the pic.
“With my big bro Jojo, @MichelleObama & @BarackObama back when the White House was the Kingdom of Wakanda…”
The guy is apparently an out-and-out racist. Which is why he tried to pin the hoax on white Trump supporters.
Here’s a link to a Canada Free Press article about the cozy employment relationship Smollet’s sisters had with the Obamas.
https://canadafreepress.com/article/jussie-smolletts-sisters-worked-for-barack-obama
There’s a pic at the link showing Barack Obama with his arm around one of Smollet’s sisters (I have no idea which one) and the hate crime hoaxer performing with Michelle onstage.
“Jussie Smollett’s sisters, actresses and activists, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, and Jazz Smollett-Warwell, worked as leading campaign surrogates for former President Barack Obama, and less than a year ago, videos of Jussie dancing with Michelle Obama went viral…”
Apparently the Smollet’s have known the Obamas for years.
“Feeling a lot of emotions. I remember meeting then Senator @barackobama 9 years ago. I’d been invited to introduce him in Nevada during the primaries. He was the underdog, the odds were stacked against him. Said he was too young, too black, too different…he was an other. I’ve always been an other so I saw myself in him. My own relative told me I was wasting my time, going state to state, knocking on doors for this guy with the funny name. I can’t tell you how many people hung the phone up on my sister @jazzsmollettwarwell and me as we clocked in our hours, phone banking…”
So by the time the hate crime hoaxer staged his hate crime hoax earlier this year they had known each other for eleven years.
You have to go to press outlets outside the country to get this information. It’ll never be reported in the MSM in this country. Otherwise you have to link to conservative web sites and I don’t like to use those as the unfair minded would say those sites are biased and can’t be trusted.
Can any former or current prosecutors comment on the propriety of dropping charges where, contrary to substantial evidence of guilt, the defendant doesn’t even admit his/her guilt, or, tangentially, show any contrition/remorse? I would think that some modicum of contrition on the defendant’s part would ordinarily be part of such an arrangement, putting aside the extraordinary and manifestly corrupt “disposition” of this case.
Well this is what the state’s prosecutors bar association said.
http://www.ilpba.org/announcements/7249825
Of course this statement was well before these texts were released to the public.
I had an ex-employee get charged with 17 counts of various theft, check cashing frauds, forgery, etc. I was talking with my son, an attorney, about it and he told me that eventually they would plea him down to one charge which is exactly what happened.
Yep, lots of prosecutors “overcharge” defendants in order to give themselves leverage during the plea bargaining. But it’s quite unusual for a prosecutor to get a grand jury to indict on 16 felony charges, then toss them all out and allow the defendant to make a public statement of his innocence, then rush to the courthouse and ask the judge to seal all the records, then pretend she has no idea how or why that happened. This deal stank of blatant corruption and special favors, because that’s exactly what it was all about.
Kim Foxx did a political recusal which is very different from a recusal recusal.
The one thing that saved the Smollet hoax from becoming a Rodney King redux was the broken surveillance camera that Jussie and the Nigerians were counting on.
With the grainy footage of the camera on the two Nigerians, bundled head to foot due to the polar vortex, the only witness to race would have been Jussie, and the video would have been played ceaselessly on all the media outlets and the attackers identified as white, with no way to combat the the identification.
The best good of the nation was served by that broken camera. It also allowed Kim Foxx to minimize Jussie’s crime because the worst did not happen.
I would personally like to thank the dude that failed to maintain that camera properly.
Forgot to add: This does not let Kim Foxx off the hook. OF course I would expect no less from a Soros candidate.
Imagine the degree of corruption In Chicago that they were surprised by the reaction. The reaction has been pretty muted. Where are the Feds in the mail fraud aspect of the investigation.
Maybe she learned the concept of recusal from Chuck Rhodes on “Billions.”