According to a special prosecutor investigative report, the initial handling of allegations against actor Jussie Smollett was a “major failure.”
The 60-page report by special prosecutor Dan Webb, who was appointed to review the case, detailed several instances of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and others in her office making false statements in 2019 when they first prosecuted Smollett and abruptly dropped the charges weeks later, per the New York Post.
Indeed, Foxx lied about having cut off communication with Smollett’s sister, Jurnee Smollett, after learning the actor had become a suspect in the investigation.
The local prosecutor exchanged 17 text messages and five phone calls with the sister five days after publicly claiming she cut off communication.
Prosecutors then dismissed a 16-count indictment against Smollett in March 2019 after he agreed to forfeit a $10,000 bond and complete 16 hours of community service.
As previously reported by Human Events News, Smollett was found guilty on December 9 of five of the six counts of felony disorderly conduct charges.
If you aren’t familiar with the story, Smollett was accused of making a false report to Chicago police that he was the victim of a hate crime in January 2019, an attack prosecutors said he staged.
He told officers he was attacked with bleach and a noose, in the middle of one of the coldest nights of the year, by two men wearing Trump hats. Detectives discovered the alleged attackers were two brothers who received $3,500 from Smollett, which police argued was payment to carry out the attack.
The full version of Webb’s report was released Monday, which includes interviews with Foxx, her former first assistant Joseph Magats, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson and prosecutor Risa Lanier.
Webb concluded that some of the actions by Foxx’s office may be violating legal ethics.
He also found that Foxx’s office misrepresented information when it said Smollett had no criminal background, which was false.
“The fact that CCSAO (Cook County State’s Attorney’s office) represented Mr. Smollett prior conviction related, in part, to making a false statement to police, and thus, similar to this alleged conduct (i.e., making a false police report) in the initial Smollett case,” the Webb report reads.
In 2007, Smollett pleaded no contest to providing false information to police during a DUI stop in Los Angeles.
In response to the report, Foxx’s office said it remains “steadfast that the office acted within its broad prosecutorial discretion.”
