Free Republic

Vote to keep Judge Michael Toomin on the bench. Don’t let the Democratic Party, which has happily endorsed a parade of slugs for judicial retention for decades, succeed in dumping one of the more independent and capable judges. Don’t let the party bosses win. With all its vindictiveness and corruption, the party’s decision to dump Toomin looks like nothing more than retaliation. The judge crossed the party bosses once too often. Toomin infuriated the old guard when he appointed a special prosecutor to investigate a possible cover-up of an assault by a nephew of former Mayor Daley. The assault led...

Foxx and friends — including her patron, Cook County Democratic boss Toni Preckwinkle and Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans — act as if they’re untouchable. Preckwinkle is so confident as party boss that she spearheaded a nonendorsement of respected Judge Michael Toomin in the election because he dared order a special prosecutor in Foxx’s Jussie Smollett alleged fake hate crime fiasco. Preckwinkle hopes voters won’t connect the dots. “It’s outrageous what’s being done to Judge Toomin,” retired Judge Sheila O’Brien, who pushed for a special prosecutor in the Smollett case, told me. “Preckwinkle should be ashamed. This is a...

Judge Michael Toomin appointed a special prosecutor to look at how Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and her office handled the controversial Jussie Smollett case. On Monday, the Cook County Democratic Party, chaired by Foxx ally Toni Preckwinkle, took the rare step of voting not to endorse Toomin for retention. The move set off a political firestorm. Toomin called it “retaliation.” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said it looked like payback. Democratic leaders who dumped Toomin pointed to what they said was his outdated approach to juvenile justice as they declared it was time for him to retire. Adding intrigue to...

Pat O’Brien, Republican candidate for Cook County state’s attorney, blamed Democratic incumbent Kim Foxx Sunday for the fatal stabbing of an employee at a Walgreens store in Wicker Park, prompting her campaign to accuse O’Brien of “fear mongering” and taking a page out of President Donald Trump’s “playbook.” Last Sunday, 18-year-old Sincere Williams allegedly entered the Walgreens store at 1372 N. Milwaukee and repeatedly stabbed employee Olga Marie Calderon, a 32-year-old mother of two who was killed, officials reported. O’Brien said Williams was arrested in May and charged as a juvenile in a burglary at a Melrose Park gun shop,...

Chicago police’s largest union donated $57,800 to Kim Foxx’s challenger in the Cook County state’s attorney’s race. In addition, the former judge looking to unseat the Democratic incumbent this November received $5,000 from the Chicago Police Sergeants Association Fund. “Kim Foxx doesn’t have the experience or judgment to run an office in regular times, and in times where there are events which obviously would test anyone, she certainly has failed that test,” O’Brien said. “There certainly is more of a feeling that I’m getting from business leaders and from individuals that they are sick and tired of favoring the criminal...

In the ongoing effort to get control of the city’s streets, Mayor Lori Lightfoot staged a news conference last Friday that was meant to make a statement. Standing on a platform in Olive Park, offset by a sapphire Lake Michigan on a topaz-sky day, the Magnificent Mile’s skyscrapers served as backdrop. Aldermen, clergy, federal and state law enforcement officials all stood as socially distanced props. Lightfoot even invited Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to stand within shouting distance of her new police superintendent, David Brown. Days earlier, Foxx had called out Brown and Lightfoot for “dishonest blame games,” after...

Foxx, the Cook County state’s attorney, has been publicly called out as a liar for her handling of that disastrous Jussie Smollett fake hate crime case. She bent backward for the celebrity entertainer, and she accepted phone calls from people with Obama White House clout. Then she tried to make the case go away. Now she’s been called out as a liar by liberal pundits, distinguished editorial boards and even by other lawyers. Foxx made up nonsense about why she was dropping charges against Smollett, after she indicted him on 16 counts of faking a hate crime that he blamed...

In bungling 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. With 38 days before voter 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. Foxx conveniently glossed over the report allegations that Foxx made a handful of false statements to the public after her office dropped 16 felony charges alleging...

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx blew yet another chance to put the Jussie Smollett controversy behind her when she issued a defiant, tone-deaf response to special prosecutor Dan Webb’s summary of his investigation. Webb’s summary was damning and devastating. It accused Foxx’s office of “substantial abuses of discretion and operational failures” and of “making false and/or misleading statements to the public” in overseeing the strange, high-profile case of a Hollywood celebrity who allegedly faked a hate crime attack against himself here in 2019. But rather than issue a long overdue apology or explanation, Foxx responded defensively yet again, denying...

Riding in trucks and U-Hauls, vandals came to Chicago. They jammed the Magnificent Mile, the city’s most important shopping district. They came prepared with tools to pry open gates and take all the merchandise that they could pack. It was a strike directed at the heart of the city. For months, the state’s attorney, the mayor, and the governor—have failed to condemn criminals or act with necessary force against such violence. They have contributed to a culture of impunity that tolerates mobs and hoodlums. Kim Foxx has already become nationally notorious for refusing to prosecute Jussie Smollett, a provocateur who...

It’s been more than a quarter of a century since a Republican has been elected to Cook County’s top prosecutor’s seat, but former Circuit Court Judge Pat O’Brien said Thursday that he intends to be the next one. After cruising through the GOP primary Tuesday, O’Brien outlined his plans to beat incumbent Democrat Kim Foxx in a live-streamed news conference, thanking his family, friends and “everyone who voted against Kim Foxx.” “We really have to clean up the mess that she’s made,” O’Brien said, not even a minute into his remarks. “I think we have to restore justice to the...

Cook County Republicans might have just been handed their best shot at recapturing an office they have not held since Bill Clinton was president. Special Prosecutor Dan Webb’s finding of “substantial abuses of discretion” in the Cook County state’s attorney’s office’s handling of the Jussie Smollett case virtually ensures that Democratic incumbent Kim Foxx will still be answering questions about the matter right up until the November election. “Aside from him coming out with an actual criminal charge against her, it’s about as devastating a report as a sitting state’s attorney can have leveled against them,” Cook County Republican Chairman...

We don’t know why Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx went to bat for actor Jussie Smollett. With Monday’s release of a damning statement from special prosecutor Dan Webb, we have an independent review examining how Foxx blew this case: She cut a deal for a celebrity defendant and misled the public numerous times about her actions. Worse, she made a mockery of a prosecutor’s supposedly equitable treatment of all defendants. Webb cleared Foxx and her office of potential criminal conduct and found no sign that anyone tried to improperly influence Foxx. Good news, we guess, for Foxx’s reelection. Otherwise,...

The special prosecutor investigating how Chicago prosecutor Kim Foxx carried out the Jussie Smollett hoax investigation has found “substantial abuses of discretion” in Foxx’s actions. The former Empire star claimed that he was attacked by MAGA hat-wearing racists who beat him and poured bleach on him in downtown Chicago in the dead of night during below zero weather. But a police investigation claimed that Smollett invented the attack. Smollett was arrested and charged with the fraud. But Prosecutor Kim Foxx dismissed the case and released Smollett, dropping the charges. Foxx’s rush to release Smollett sparked an investigation, led by Dan...

In a statement on the conclusions of his investigation, special prosecutor Dan Webb sharply criticized the handling of the Smollett case by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and her assistant prosecutors, saying their handling was marked by disarray and misleading statements. Foxx’s office surprised and angered many in Chicago by dropping charges that accused the former “Empire” actor of staging an alleged racist and homophobic attack against himself. Smollett is still adamant that the attack was real and wasn’t a publicity hoax. Webb’s findings announced Monday came after charges were restored against Smollett by the same special prosecutor in...

Gun violence is surging in Chicago and we’re all shattered by the loss of life, including young lives caught in the crossfire. It is harder than ever for all of us — and especially police — to do our jobs due to COVID-19. The community is frustrated, they’re demanding reform and, sadly, some people are looting. In this environment, it’s natural to look for others to blame. After all, none of us — police, prosecutors, judges or corrections officers — are solely in control of who gets arrested, prosecuted, sentenced and incarcerated. At the moment, the elected leadership at the...

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is dropping felony cases involving charges of murder and other serious offenses . . . During Foxx’s first three years as the county’s top prosecutor, her office dropped all charges against 29.9% of felony defendants, a dramatic increase over her predecessor. Foxx, a Democrat, swept into the state’s attorney’s office in 2016 vowing to reform the criminal justice system and reduce the population of Cook County Jail, which disproportionately holds low-income people of color. She is up for reelection in November. The Tribune found that Foxx’s higher rates of dropped cases included people accused...

“We are waking up in shock this morning,” said Mayor Lori Lightfoot, calling it “brazen criminal looting and destruction.” Chicago Police Supt. David Brown, who joined the mayor for a news conference at CPD headquarters Monday, called it “pure criminality” not connected to any peaceful protest. “Criminals took to the streets with the confidence that there would be no consequences for their actions,” Brown said, adding that police would aggressively pursue cases against people involved in the looting. Brown and Lightfoot also called on the Cook County state’s attorney’s office to handle the arrests from the looting seriously, arguing that...

A gun on the ground, a body on the street, cops, civilians milling about in confusion. A woman was screaming, sitting in her car, parked outside one of the expensive Oak Street boutiques. “What the (bleep)!” she screamed at no one. “What the (bleep)!!!” And I wondered: Is Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot losing the city? Or has she already lost it? Where are Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and Foxx’s political patron, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, to stand and tell us what they’re doing to help Lightfoot stop the violence? Where’s Illinois Attorney...

Last week, with violence spiking around the country, I wrote a column on the growing sense of lawlessness in America’s urban areas. In response, the Tribune newspaper union, the Chicago Tribune Guild, which I have repeatedly and politely declined to join, wrote an open letter to management defaming me, by falsely accusing me of religious bigotry and fomenting conspiracy theories. My July 22 column was titled “Something grows in the big cities run by Democrats: An overwhelming sense of lawlessness.” It explored the connections between soft-on-crime prosecutors and increases in violence along with the political donations of left-wing billionaire George...