If Foxx Lied To Public She Represents, Take Away Her Law License

CHICAGO — In the bungling of People vs. Jussie Smollett, Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx lied to her clients — the public, special prosecutor Dan Webb said.

If you live in Cook County, that client is you. Foxx is betting you can't do anything about it.

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With 38 days before voters can start to cast ballots to decide the fate of her re-election bid, Foxx issued a public statement, tweeted her political spin and vanished to avoid questioning.

"As the report unequivocally confirms, State's Attorney Foxx was not involved in the decision-making process regarding the Jussie Smollett case at any point and there was no outside influence on that process," Foxx's statement read.

Foxx conveniently glossed over that the report included allegations that Foxx made a handful of false statements to the public after her office dropped 16 felony charges alleging that Smollett faked a hate crime against himself and lied to Chicago police about it.

She didn't deny lying to the public. Rather, her office refuted any allegation that might suggest any of her statements were "deliberately inaccurate."

And until a judge gives permission to make Webb's full 60-page report public, "there will be no further statements on this matter," Foxx's office said.

Foxx's statement said her office had discussed the findings with Webb and made changes to operations before he released the summary report Monday — the same day Politico exclusively reported she paused her re-election campaign to spend time with her husband who is having surgery to treat prostate cancer.

A coincidence, of course. How dare anyone suggest otherwise?

MORE ON PATCH: Kim Foxx Made False Statements Handling Smollett Case: Report

None of Foxx's alleged fibs, in my estimation, is more important than her February 2019 claim that she had recused herself from the case.

Why? Because Foxx didn't actually recuse herself, which I was the first to report. In response to my prodding in March 2019, Foxx's office tried to explain away the false and misleading statement saying that the top prosecutor had used the "colloquial" meaning of recuse, rather than, you know, the legal definition.

Instead of owning up to "major legal defect" in Foxx's phony recusal, the state's attorney's office "made the decision to ignore" it. "Seemingly because they did not want to admit that they had made such a major mistake of judgment." And Later, Foxx "compounded the problem" by lying to reporters about it, Webb said in the 12-page summary report that marked the end of his probe.

It's probably a safe bet that we won't hear from Foxx much as we inch closer to Election Day. She hasn't agreed to debate her Republican opponent, Pat O'Brien. She rarely makes public appearances to take questions from reporters. And doing either could only hurt her election bid, typically considered an assured victory for any Democrat who makes it out of the primary.

On Monday, O'Brien called for Foxx to resign. But that's not gonna happen. Everybody knows takes more than an allegation — or federal indictment, for that matter — to get a Democratic Machine incumbent to quit.

Foxx's critics will say Cook County voters will throw her out of office for her lies on Election Day. But that's a long shot, too. A Republican hasn't controlled the state's attorney's office since the 1990s. And Democrats in these parts have a long history of re-electing accomplished liars — former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, for instance.

What's different about Foxx's alleged lies is that even if she's re-elected, there's still a chance that tall tales could oust her from office.

Now this might come as surprise: Lawyers aren't supposed to lie. Not just in court or to a judge, but pretty much ever. It says so in the Illinois Supreme Court's rules of professional conduct: "In no circumstances is the lawyer permitted to knowingly make a false statement of material fact."

I figure that clause in the conduct code inspired Foxx's office to claim that her alleged lies were not "deliberate," which signaled to me she's at least a bit worried Webb's findings could get her disbarred. You can't serve as the county's top prosecutor without a law license.

Webb said the code of conduct required him to file his full 60-page report with the Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission, which would determine whether to decide if Foxx's false statements to the public were an ethical breach, and could hold hearings to dole out punishment.

A spokesman from the Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission declined to comment because all investigations are kept secret unless the allegations warrant a hearing.

If Foxx's defense is that she accidentally lied to her client, she's in trouble.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots.
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