Kim Foxx, the controversial state attorney for Cook County, Illinois, has dropped more cases involving felonies—including murder—than her predecessor did, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Foxx, whose jurisdiction includes the crime-ridden city of Chicago, saw her office drop 30 percent of its cases against felony defendants in her first three years, which was an increase of 10 percent from the final three years of her predecessor, Anita Alvarez, who dropped only about 19 percent of all such cases. This amounted to just over 25,000 criminals who saw their felony charges dropped with Foxx in office, up from 18,000 under Alvarez.
Foxx attempted to defend her office’s conduct in an interview, claiming that “this administration has been clear that our focus would be on violent crime, and making sure that our resources and attention would go to addressing violent crime.”
However, a significant amount of those dropped felony cases did indeed involve violent crime; of the felony cases that were dropped, 8.1 percent involved homicides, while 9.5 percent of the dropped cases were for felony sex crimes, and 8.1 percent of aggravated battery cases were also dropped.
Foxx, whose reelection campaign this year was supported by left-wing billionaire George Soros, became notorious for dropping all charges against disgraced former TV actor Jussie Smollett, who staged a hoax hate crime against himself in January 2019 by hiring two Nigerian men to attack him. Smollett claimed he was attacked by white men wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats, suggesting his attackers were supporters of President Donald Trump.
The hoax was quickly exposed, and although Smollett was initially charged with multiple felonies, Foxx’s office dropped all 16 counts. A Cook County judge ultimately appointed a special prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Dan Webb, to investigate the matter independently of Foxx’s office. Webb’s investigation soon returned a grand jury indictment on charges that were virtually identical to the ones that Foxx dropped.