Kimberly Foxx

Kimberly Foxx

: Photo from Wikimedia Commons / Author of Photo: Chi Hack Night / Original Source of Photo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBEjk3AA608

Overview

* Was elected State’s Attorney of Cook County, Illinois in 2016
* Opposes traditional “tough-on-crime” approaches to law enforcement
* Was corrupt in her handling of actor Jussie Smollett’s race-attack hoax in 2019
* Treated Black Lives Matter rioters of 2020 leniently


Background

Kimberly M. Foxx was born on April 4, 1972 in Chicago, Illinois, and was raised in the Cabrini Green Projects of that city. She earned a B.A. degree in Political Science in 1994 and a Juris Doctor degree in 1997, both from Southern Illinois University.

After completing law school, Foxx worked for Cigna Property & Casualty as a Workers Compensation Claims Associate from August 1997 to May 1998. She then spent the next three years in Chicago, employed as a Cook County Assistant Public Guardian.

Foxx subsequently joined the Office of the Cook County State’s Attorney (SA), where she was an Assistant SA in the Juvenile Justice Bureau from 2001-2007. In 2007-2008, she acted as an Assistant SA who handled the office’s Preliminary Hearings, Felony Review, and Sex Crimes.

Foxx held the title of Faculty Instructor for the National College of District Attorneys from 2007-2011. From August 2008 to April 2013, she served as a Supervisor for twelve Assistant SAs within the Juvenile Justice Bureau. She then spent six months as Deputy Chief of Staff for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle before being promoted to Chief of Staff in November 2013, a position she held until August 2015. Foxx also served as the President of the Board of Directors for Planned Parenthood of Illinois from July 2014 to August 2015.

Campaign for State’s Attorney of Cook County

In July 2015, Foxx launched a campaign to run for SA of Cook County, whose county seat is the city of Chicago. She easily won the Democratic nomination in March 2016 when she secured 52.2% of the primary election vote, defeating her former boss and the incumbent SA, Anita Alvarez, as well as fellow challenger Donna More.

Support from George Soros & Others

Foxx was the beneficiary of various wealthy Democrat donors during the 2016 election cycle. For example, she received $330,000 in campaign contributions from leftist New York multibillionaire George Soros. That funding came via the Illinois Justice and Public Safety PAC (IJPS-PAC), part of a network of similarly named state-level PACs established by Soros to help elect radical district attorneys in cities and counties across the United States. IJPS-PAC, in fact, was created for the sole purpose of helping Foxx win the race for Cook County SA.

In addition to Soros’ money, Foxx also collected $600,000 from the leftist billionaire and Democrat mega-donor Fred Eyechaner, $200,000 from affiliates of the Service Employees International Union, and $300,000 from the campaign of Toni Preckwinkle (Foxx’s mentor and a radical Chicago city official).

Foxx Wins Election As State’s Attorney

Foxx won the general election for Cook County State’s Attorney on November 6, 2016, easily defeating Republican Christopher Pfannkuche with 72% of the vote. After Foxx’s victory, George Soros delivered another $75,000 to her — again via the IJPS-PAC.

Foxx took office as SA on December 1, 2016.

Aiming to Ensure That Illegal Aliens Are Not Deported

After taking office, Foxx hired the Chicago-based immigration attorney Michael Kasprzynski to serve as her first immigration adviser, tasked with “ensur[ing] that noncitizen defendants do not face unnecessary immigration consequences, particularly for misdemeanor and low-level offenses.” As Breitbart.com put it: “The role effectively seeks to help criminally charged illegal aliens escape arrest by ICE and deportation.”

Foxx’s Views & Actions on Criminal-Justice Reform

In June 2017, Foxx’s office announced that in misdemeanor cases involving offenses like retail theft, possession of controlled substances, and criminal damage to property, its prosecutors would recommend the use of I-Bonds (i.e., Individual Bonds). These are personal recognizance bonds by which the accused is released for the pretrial period, without having to pay any money, after he signs a statement pledging to appear in court at a future time.

At the end of 2017, a leftwing group called The People’s Lobby – which aims to “reclaim government from corporate interests — evaluated Foxx’s performance during her first year as SA vis-à-vis her ability to advance a variety of left-wing objectives. Following are four examples, quoted verbatim from The People’s Lobby analysis:

  • Advance Bail Reform — This is an area of reform where much progress has been made by Foxx during her short time in office, often in collaboration with other justice system stakeholders. We recommend Foxx continue … advocating for pretrial release whenever possible.
  • Lessen Immigration Collateral Consequences — State’s Attorney Foxx has expressed enthusiasm for developing internal guidelines and/or policies designed to limit the collateral immigration consequences [e.g., possible deportation] for non-citizens accused of crimes, but this is an area in which she has not yet made significant progress.
  • End the Drug War — The failed War on Drugs has decimated African American and Latino communities and contributed to the unnecessary overdose deaths of thousands of people. State’s Attorney Foxx has spoken publicly in a number of settings on the need to address drug use as a public health issue rather than a criminal justice issue but has not yet made significant progress in implementing this change.
  • Reduce Overcharging — For years, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office has been known for bringing the maximum number and most severe types of charges against people, using such leverage to extract plea deals and other administrative benefits. State’s Attorney Foxx appears to be making some progress in improving training for prosecutors so that they make more appropriate charging decisions. […] Foxx should develop and publicly share guidelines on charging decisions and also set a goal of charging fewer criminal cases overall.

In an April 2018 interview with the Chicago Students for Criminal Justice Reform, Foxx denounced the traditional “tough-on-crime” approach to law enforcement, stating:

“I think historically people look at the criminal justice system as good versus evil, that you know people like me who sit in law enforcement wear the white hats and we’re out to go get people who are evil doers, who are bad people. And what you realize when you do this work is that there is only a small fraction of people who are out there who are aimed to do the most damage possible. It’s a small fraction. The majority of the people who are in our criminal justice system are there because they are dealing with a myriad of issues, whether it’s drug addiction or mental health or poverty, that these aren’t folks who keep you up at night, these aren’t the people that you got to triple bolt the door for. These are people who have been failed by a number of systems and we don’t know what to do with them. And so, our response though in criminal justice has been let’s keep the boogeyman out, let’s protect ourselves from these dangerous people, when in fact more likely than not, people in our criminal justice system are not a danger. There are people who are, but that is small. But our policy has been geared towards everybody for a small fraction of folks who do the most harm.”

In the same interview, Foxx outlined her view of how the criminal-justice system should be reformed:

“For me, criminal justice reform looks like a real humanitarian approach to looking at our systems. And it means that you can’t do it in isolation. You can’t look at jails as the answers to failed school systems or failed public policy around housing or mental health. Reform means that we have to work as a collective to say our response is appropriate for the need. Are we really dealing with prevention? Are we really making sure that we’re keeping our communities safer by making sure that the people who live in them are healthy? And we don’t talk about healthy communities and criminal justice. We talk about bad people. And healthy communities mean that people who aren’t addicted to drugs aren’t suffering without treatment for mental health issues, aren’t living in abject poverty tend not to engage in those behaviors that the criminal justice system responds to. A real reform to me means stop talking about sentences and stiffer penalties and start talking about how you build healthier, thriving communities.”

Also in the April 2018 interview, Foxx boasted that she had played a key role in raising the threshold of what constituted felony retail theft, as opposed to misdemeanor retail theft:

“We raised the threshold for retail theft. Retail theft, which is stealing from retail establishments, was the number one charged crime in Cook County in 2016…. And what people don’t know is in Chicago or Cook County, Illinois period, our threshold for whether you’re charged with a felony or a misdemeanor is 300 dollars. Anything over 300 dollars is a felony which has long collateral consequences…. What you find is that people are stealing, which I do not condone stealing, but the price that we all pay for it, someone steals your phone, one phone, or steals a phone from a retail establishment, is over 300 dollars. The conviction means they are far less likely to be able to get a job, housing, education, and we all suffer for that. We raised the threshold in our office, using our discretion, to 1,000 dollars. We did that in December of 2016.”

Deep Admiration for Kamala Harris

In January 2019, Foxx expressed her fervent support for Kamala Harris after the latter launched her presidential campaign for 2020. On her official Twitter account, Foxx said of Harris: “I would not be where I am today without her guidance during my first run for political office, and she has continued to mentor me as I work to reform the criminal justice system in Cook County.”

Foxx’s Corrupt Handling of the Jussie Smollett Case

Foxx attracted national attention for her handling of black homosexual actor Jussie Smollett’s phony claim that he had been victimized by a “hate crime” in January 2019. Specifically, Smollett falsely alleged that, at 2 a.m. on a freezing-cold morning in Chicago, two white men wearing masks and MAGA hats had accosted him, hurled racist and anti-gay epithets at him, told him that “this is MAGA country,” poured bleach on him, and tied a noose around his neck. Smollett even went so far as to go to a hospital in an attempt to make the hoax appear more credible.[1]

In February 2019, by which time the falsity of Smollett’s allegations had become plain to see, he was indicted on 16 charges of felony disorderly conduct — a designation that encompasses a wide range of offenses in Illinois. Foxx subsequently recused herself from the Smollett case on February 20, 2019, when it was revealed that she had quietly facilitated numerous conversations between the Smollett family and the Chicago Police Department. It was also reported that former Michelle Obama aide Tina Tchen had contacted Foxx to encourage her not to prosecute the case; Tchen was the CEO of Time’s Up, an anti-sexual-harassment organization where Smollett’s sister served as a board member.

In March 2019, just a few weeks after Mr. Smollett’s indictment, Foxx’s office suddenly dropped all charges in exchange for Smollett forfeiting his $10,000 bond and agreeing to perform some community service. Despite the fact that Foxx had recused herself from the case, she wrote an op-ed piece in a Chicago newspaper justifying the dismissal of the charges against Smollett — on grounds that he had “no previous criminal record.” But in fact, Smollett had been previously convicted of giving a false report to California police in a DUI case.

A special prosecutor named Dan Webb was later tasked with investigating the Smollett case. He issued his findings in a December 2021 report that: (a) showed how Smollett’s sister had been in frequent communication with Foxx while the brother was being investigated by police authorities; (b) asserted that Foxx had falsely claimed that Smollett could only be fined the $10,000 bond he had forfeited, when in fact he could have been held responsible for paying $300,000 to compensate the Chicago Police Department for its time spent investigating the hoax; (c) concluded that Foxx’s office had committed multiple “failures” and “substantial abuses of discretion” in its handling of the case; and (d) determined that Foxx’s office had “breached its obligations of honesty and transparency by making false and misleading statements.”

In December 2021 as well, Smollett was convicted on 5 of 6 charges related to his staging of a hate crime.

Dropping Felony Charges and Failing to Convict

During Foxx’s first three years as SA, her office dropped all charges against nearly 30% of felony defendants in Cook County — including 8.1% of homicide defendants and 9.5% of sex-crime defendants. By contrast, the office of the previous SA, Anita Alvarez, had dropped all charges against only 19.4% of felony defendants — including just 5.3% of homicide defendants and 6.5% of sex-crime defendants.[2]  Moreover, Foxx’s office achieved convictions in just 66% of its felony cases, a significant drop-off from the 75% figure under Alvarez.

The Chicago Tribune reported on August 10, 2020: “During Foxx’s first three years as the county’s top prosecutor, […] a total of 25,183 people had their felony cases dismissed under Foxx through November 2019, up from 18,694 for a similar period under Alvarez […] For the three-year period analyzed, Foxx’s office dropped 8.1% of homicide cases, compared with 5.3% under Alvarez, the Tribune found. Under Foxx, the office dropped 9.5% of felony sex crime cases; the rate was 6.5% for Alvarez.”

Lenient Treatment of Black Lives Matter Rioters in 2020

As leftwing rioters and looters took to the streets of Chicago following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer in May 2020, Foxx portrayed their violence as nothing more than the actions of a tiny fringe minority. “If we continue to talk about that fringe [violent] element who’s tried to hijack this [Black Lives Matter protest movement], and not about the men and women who died in the [criminal-justice] systems that have allowed their deaths to go unpunished, we will have learned nothing from this,” she stated. Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown, in turn, alleged that Foxx’s remarks had “emboldened” the rioters.

In June 2020, Foxx ordered her office not to prosecute “minor offenses” related to the unrest following Floyd’s death: “I’m encouraged by the efforts of those who are standing against years of racial injustice to resoundingly state that ‘Black Lives Matter.’ We have the right to peacefully protest for change …” Foxx also told her prosecutors that “specific to demonstration-related ordinance violations, … we will not be prosecuting those who protested peacefully in the wake of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s murders, and as such we will not be standing up in court on any of the city’s protest related cases.” For more serious crimes such as assault, resisting arrest, battery, mob action, and aggravated battery, Foxx similarly called for a “presumption against proceeding” with prosecutions — unless: (a) there existed body-cam or dash-cam footage of the offense, or (b) the complainant was a police officer.

Foxx Boasts of Minimizing the Penalties for Drug Offenses

When Foxx ran for re-election as SA in 2020, she boasted of the success she had achieved in minimizing the penalties for drug-related offenses: “As prosecutors, we must own our role in the War on Drugs and work to right those wrongs, especially on the heels of marijuana legalization in Illinois. I’m proud that we have started this by expunging the records of over a thousand low-level marijuana offenders. Now, we must continue this critical work together.”

Foxx Wins Re-Election, Again with Support from George Soros

In her 2020 campaign, Foxx, whose candidacy was endorsed by the pro-Bernie Sanders organization Our Revolution, once again received financial support from George Soros’ Illinois Justice and Public Safety PAC — to which Soros contributed some $2 million in February of that year. On the strength of such support, Foxx defeated her three Democrat challengers and secured her party’s nomination with 50.2% of the vote in the March 2020 primary. In the general election of November 3, 2020, Foxx won reelection to another term in office, garnering 54.2% of the vote to defeat Republican challenger Patrick W. O’Brien.

Massive Spike in Chicago Homicides in 2021

Violence in Chicago continued to spiral out of control under State’s Attorney Foxx throughout 2021. As NBCchicago.com reported in January 2022: “The year of 2021 ended as one of the most violent on record in Chicago, as a rise in the number of shootings left more people dead than in any single year in a quarter century…. According to the [police] department, 2021 ended with 797 homicides. That is 25 more than were recorded 2020, 299 more than in 2019 and the most since 1996. And there were 3,561 shooting incidents in 2021, which is just over 300 more than were recorded in 2020 and a staggering 1,415 more shooting incidents than were recorded in the city in 2019.”

Foxx Is Accused of Domestic Violence

At approximately 10:09 p.m. on June 4, 2022, Kimberly Foxx’s husband, Kelley Foxx, called 911 to ask for police to be sent to the couple’s Illinois residence because of a “domestic issue” in which Mrs. Foxx had allegedly slapped him. In an audio recording of the phone call, Mr. Foxx could be heard saying, “Don’t touch me!” “Ain’t nobody touching you. Get out!” shouted a woman in the background.

Breitbart News describes what happened after two police officers arrived at the Foxx home:

“Once officers arrived on the scene, ‘Kelley explained that Kimberly got mad about something that was posted on Facebook that he did,’ an officer wrote in the report.

“She requested he leave the residence, but he would not, causing Kim to turn to force, Kelley told officers. While he tried to exit a bathroom, she allegedly blocked his path, and he further stated that Kim latched onto his shirt collar and flung his video game controller, the report noted. Kelley reportedly said he went to turn on the television, and Kim ripped the controller from his hand and tossed it. While laying out these allegations to officers, Kim was in earshot and reportedly said, ‘All that is true,’ according to the document.

“Kelley then stated that Kim slapped him on the left cheek, though an officer who checked him out with a flashlight reported not seeing any signs that Kelley had been hit, the report asserted. The state’s attorney’s husband replied by saying that he wanted to ensure someone knew what was transpiring in terms of Kim’s physical aggression, adding he wished for it to cease, per the report.”

The officers wrote that Mrs. Foxx admitted to putting “her hands on Kelley but it was only to help guide him out of the house.” Moreover, the officers wrote that they did not see “evidence to support an arrest.”

Panelist at Netroots Nation Conference

In October 2021, Foxx was a panelist at a Netroots Nation conference session titled “Survival of The Squad: Violence Against Women of Color in Politics.” (“The Squad” is a term that referred specifically to a small group of particularly radical Democrat members of Congress: Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley.)

Footnotes:


  1. Smollett’s apparent underlying objective was to raise his own public profile while simultaneously portraying Trump supporters as violent racists and homophobes.
  2. By November 2019, Foxx’s office had dismissed a total of 25,183 felony cases, vs. 18,694 during an equivalent time period under Alvarez.

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