Free Republic

The newly unsealed Jussie Smollett court files that were released late on Thursday reveal little of note from the Empire actor's case but show how the State's Attorney asked the Office of the Inspector General's to investigate her handling of it. The files were made public on Thursday by a judge who agreed with media lawyers that Smollett had no right to privacy because he had spoken openly about the case to defend himself. The Cook County court record was unsealed and contained 250 pages of previously unseen paperwork but nothing in it was of particular note. Among the document...

Jussie Smollett told Chicago police he had fought off a pair of attackers who targeted him in an apparent hate crime, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx tried to persuade Police Supt. Eddie Johnson to turn the investigation over to the FBI. Foxx’s call came after an influential supporter of the “Empire” actor reached out to Foxx personally: Tina Tchen, a Chicago attorney and former chief of staff for Michelle Obama, according to emails and text messages provided to the Chicago Sun-Times in response to a public records request. Tchen passed Foxx’s number to a relative of the actor, and...