Chicago, IL – The latest episode in the Jussie Smollett saga continues to unfold as the campaign to rid Cook County of the first honest, progressive, Black woman state’s attorney in county history, Kim Foxx, reaches lower and lower into the barrel of dirty tricks, a la Roger Stone and Donald Trump. And make no mistake about it: this is not about rooting out favoritism to the wealthy in the state’s attorney’s office, as cynically declared by Bill Conway, the billionaire Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) candidate running against her. It’s about getting rid of the first state’s attorney in Cook County history who has actually done something about crooked cops and prosecutors and freed their victims and survivors from unlawful prosecution and incarceration.

But first, let’s look at some facts about the re-indictment of Smollett, a Black, gay actor who insists that he was, indeed, physically attacked a year ago by men screaming racist and homophobic insults. Initially, when the police charged two men with the attack, they were quick to reverse course and charge Smollett with staging the whole thing, letting his alleged attackers go scot-free. They then charged Smollett with 16 felony counts of making a false report to police. When Foxx’s office moved to dismiss the charges because there was no case there, it was alleged that she did so because of pressure from people associated with former President Barack Obama.

No one bothered to ask whether there was any real case against Smollett, whether the two alleged conspirators who ‘staged’ the attack with Smollett, would ever stand up as reliable witnesses, or whether anyone else might have been involved. Everyone in the mainstream media and the internet assumed Smollett was guilty, accepting the word of former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former Police Chief Eddie Johnson, and the FOP – all proven and notorious liars about everything police. Such is the state of ‘racial equality’ in Chicago today.

With dismissal of the charges against Smollett they all went ballistic. But their target was not Smollett. It was Kim Foxx, who had been their real target all the while. Foxx has been responsible for the exoneration of almost 100 victims of frame-up and torture by corrupt, drug-dealing cops, and they hate her for that. She has turned the Conviction Integrity Unit in her office, which was a sham under her predecessor, into a unit that actually examines wrongful convictions and tries to set them right.

Retired Judge Sheila O’Brien was quick to join the fray. She petitioned the Circuit Court to name a special prosecutor to re-open the case. The court appointed former U. S. Attorney Dan Webb to that position and appointed a special grand jury. Last week, five weeks before the election, Webb announced that Smollett had been indicted by that grand jury on six misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct. Foxx compared the indictment to the announcement by FBI Director James Comey two weeks before the 2016 presidential election, that he was re-opening the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

So, Cook County has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to get six misdemeanor indictments against Smollett, when the supposed felony charges against him must have clearly been unsustainable. No court observer can recall an elephant as big as this special grand jury that has labored so hard and cost so much and produced such a small mouse.

No doubt, after the March 17 primary election, if the Fraternal Order of Police achieves their defeat of Foxx, this case will totally collapse. The FOP, the former mayor and the police chief will crawl back into their caves and forget about it. If they fail in their mission, however, they will continue with renewed energy. Maybe they’ll even support a Republican for state’s attorney in November, like happened with Bernie Epton against Harold Washington in 1983. Maybe they’ll amend their lawsuit against Smollett to add the outrageous costs of Webb’s ‘investigation’ of the case.

Who knows? One thing is clear: their shamelessness and hypocrisy are boundless.

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #JussieSmollett