In February, a grand jury returned a new 6-count charge against Smollett.
Despite “substantial abuse of discretion and operational failures,” the dismissal of prosecutors against Jussie Smollett by Cook County Attorney Kimberly County State and her staff did not reach the level of criminal misconduct, according to Special Prosecutor Dan K. Webb.
In January 2019, the former actor “Empire” told police that he was targeting a racist and homophobic attack in which he claimed that the attackers hit him, put a nose around his neck and threw some kind of chemical substance at him.
After an investigation, police determined that Smollett stepped up the attack, and hired two brothers to help pull it out. He was indicted and charged, but Foxx’s bureau dropped all prosecutors in March, 2019. That prompted Webb’s appointment last summer by a judge to investigate what happened.
Webb said he concluded that Foxx should not have legally dismissed her and appointed a deputy, Joseph Magats, as acting attorney general of the state and that when she learned of this “major legal defect” she “ignored”[d]”advice on how to remedy the problem. The correct procedure was to” dismiss the entire CCSAO and ask the court to appoint a special prosecutor. “
He also said that Foxx kept in touch with Smollett’s sister, Jurnee Smollett, even after learning on February 8 that he was a suspect, and “then made false statements to the media claiming that she had all communication with Ms Smollett quit as soon as she learned that Mr Smollett was a suspect. “Webb claims that Foxx was in contact with the sister until February 13, 2019.
In addition, Webb wrote that prosecutors in Foxx’s office “did not learn of new evidence between when the CCSAO filed a 16-count indictment against Mr. Smollett on March 7, 2019, when the CCSAO believed it had a strong case against Mr. Smollett, and March 26, 2019, when the entire indictment was dismissed. ”
Webb further lamented in the report that during voting, key decision-makers in the Cooks State Attorney’s Office (CCSAO)’s dismissal of the case offered “significant and meaningful divergent explanations for how the resolution was reached.”
Foxx said in a statement that its office “categorically rejects [special prosecutor]’S characterizations of their practices of procedural discretion and private as public statements as’ abuse of discretion ‘as false statements to the public,’ and that ‘any implication that statements made by the CCSAO are deliberately inaccurate is not true.’ She said her office would submit a written response to the full report upon receipt.
‘An abundance of caution’
Foxx abruptly dismissed itself from the case on February 19, 2019, from “an abundance of caution … based on acquaintance with potential witnesses in the case,” a spokesman said at the time. Smollett was soon charged with perjury for submitting a false police report, and turned himself in to police. On March 8, 2019, a grand jury returned a 16 count charge against him. Less than three weeks later, Foxx’s office dismissed all prosecutors against Smollett.
The conclusions of Webb’s investigation into Foxx’s office complete the second half of the special prosecutor’s mandate.
He was appointed last year by Judge Michael Toomin of Cook County Circuit to determine whether Smollett should be prosecuted again after Foxx’s office denied the allegations and investigated the CCSAO’s handling of the case. Webb concluded that Smollet should.
In February, a grand jury from Illinois presented Webb Smollett’s findings on six counts of disorderly conduct related to making four separate false reports to Chicago Police Department officers. Smollett’s trial has been delayed by the pandemic.
Foxx acknowledged in its statement that lessons were learned after the fallout from its decision to drop the charges against Smollett.
“As a result of the issues addressed in the press release, and of discussions thereon, the CCSAO has already made a number of changes to its operations, including the hiring of a new CCSAO ethics officer and more separation of its function from strengthen the office administration, and strengthen the reinforcement plan with clear guidelines and explicit definitions of conflicts of interest. ”
In March, Foxx won a Democratic primary and is expected to win against her Republican opponent in November, two years after winning a former Democratic primary, gaining 72 percent of the vote, according to the Chicago Tribune. She manages the second-largest prosecutor in the U.S., behind only the Los Angeles County District Attorney, according to the CCSAO website.
Josh Margolin, Stephanie Wash, Alex Perez, Karma Allen and Bill Hutchinson of ABC News contributed to this report.
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