Judging Freedom - Special prosecutor report found Kim Foxx’s office mishandled Jussie Smollett case

Episode Date: December 21, 2021

Judge Napolitano goes in-depth on a new special prosecutor report, detailing how Kim Foxx's office mishandled the Smollett case.#JussieSmollett #Chicago #KimFoxx  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Judge Napolitano here with Judging Freedom with what's on my mind today. I'm going to discuss with you the report of the special prosecutor, Dan Webb, concerning the district attorney of Chicago, whose name is Kim Fox, and the manner in which he mishandled the Jesse Smollett case. Just to give you some background, Jesse, a well-known actor, apparently staged an attack on himself in an effort to draw attention to himself, he claimed that it was an anti-gay, anti-black attack by people who were supporters of President Trump. In fact, a jury found that he staged the whole thing and that the people who supposedly attacked him were friends and colleagues of his whom he paid to do so. You probably know how the case ended up. How they get to where it was is after he reported this, police took the report seriously and investigated it very seriously. And about halfway through the investigation, started to disbelieve Jesse because the alleged perpetrator said, hey, wait a minute, we didn't attack him. It was an act. He paid us to do so.

This information was brought to Kim Fox, the prosecutor for Cook County, which is the city of Chicago. And she at first decided that Jussie should not be prosecuted. And then when it turned out that a lot of Jussie supporters had given money to her campaign, took a step back, and the deputy prosecutor actually made the decision not to prosecute him. Well, the decision not to prosecute him was, if you let us keep, I've never heard of this in all my years as a judge and monitoring law enforcement, if you let us keep your bail, which was $10,000 cash, we will drop the charges against you. Let me state it differently. The $10,000 was some form of a slap on the wrist. For what? For filing a false complaint. So it's probably fair to say that the prosecutors who decided not to charge him believed that he had filed a false complaint. prosecutor in Chicago, who was appointed by the court to prosecute Jussie, who successfully prosecuted him, and had him convicted on five of six counts. According to Mr. Webb's investigation,

Kim Fox, instead of working, this is almost unbelievable, instead of working with her prosecutors, was working with Jussie's defense lawyers to concoct a way to get him out of it. So she really had what we call unclean hands. I don't think she committed a crime, but she may very well have violated legal ethics, which just don't countenance things like that. Now, she's up for reelection next year. Who knows if the good people of Chicago will give her another term in that job, but it looks very bad for her now. Jussie was convicted on five of six counts. He could go to jail for three years. I don't think he will because he doesn't have a prior criminal record and the

charges were relatively low level and they indicate that with no priors, you should not go to jail, but I'm not the judge in that case, and I don't know what that judge will do. So I do these pop-ups about two or three times a day whenever there is significant news in the legal world. If you like them, tell your friends. If you like them, subscribe to Judging Freedom. If you like them, subscribe to the notifications on Judging Freedom freedom and you'll know when these pop-ups are coming enjoy the rest of it