In case you somehow missed it, in 2019, on the night before a polar vortex of bitterly cold temperatures hit Chicago, at 1:00am on the Near North Side, the onetime Empire actor claimed that two men yelling, “This is MAGA country” poured bleach on him and put a noose around his neck after his visit to a Subway restaurant.
As soon as I heard about the “attack,” I had my doubts. So did the Chicago Police.
What really happened is that Smollett, who is also a rapper, paid two Nigerian brothers to stage the attack.
A few weeks later, Cook County’s so-called prosecutor, State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, dropped all of the hoax-related charges against Smollett–without an admission of guilt from Smollett. His $10,000 bond was forfeited.
The uproar forced Foxx to appoint a special prosecutor, tough-as-nails former US Attorney Dan Webb, to try the case against Smollett, and a jury here in Cook County found him guilty–he was sentenced to five months in prison. But Smollett served only a few days of that sentence after being released until his appeal played out.
Keep in mind that many CPD man-hours were wasted as cops, under pressure from police brass, no doubt, investigated the “crime” against Smollett.
Tina Tchen. a former top aide to Barack Obama, called Foxx on behalf of Smollett’s family to work out a deal.
Foxx despises the Smollett millstone around her neck, because she believes they diminish her so-called accomplishments in office. She leaves office after eight years of catch-and-release “prosecution” that has made Chicago and its inner suburbs a worse place to live. Foxx sadly, wasn’t voted out, she chose not to run for a third term.
Foxx should be best remembered for enabling of criminals, but since the Smollett case reignited interest in her botched handling of his crimes, something that will haunt her forever.
When Foxx dies and her obituaries are published, the Smollett case will be the lead.
Good.
Kim Foxx sucked as a prosecutor, and because of Smollett, she’ll be remembered as incompetent. And she is–on so many levels.
There is at least some justice in this world.
John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit from suburban Cook County.
Yesterday Carlos Henriquez made the front page of the Boston Herald:
Inmate lawmaker Rep. Carlos Henriquez is doing his Beacon Hill business from his Billerica jail cell, thumbing through bills and budget proposals, and speaking to staff by phone “at least once a day,”
according to the disgraced Dorchester Democrat’s legislative aide.
“We’ve been in regular contact with him, and at this point he’s concerned with the issues of the district,” aide Jessica DaSilva told the Herald.
Prison is a pretty boring place so Henriquez is lucky to have all this legislative and constituent business to keep his day full.
DaSilva said Henriquez’s office is fielding four or five constituent calls a day, mostly from people concerned about cuts to unemployment benefits. She said Henriquez also has been reviewing budget amendments, though she would not say which.
If nothing else it means the voters know where he is 24/7 and he has time to read the bills if he so chooses.
Now to me A lawmaker convicted of assaulting a women who refused him sex and had to escape his car in the wee hours of the morning is, in the era of the “war on woman” a national story, that same lawmaker refusing to resign is even more so but that lawmaker on the front page of a state newspaper doing legislative work from in prison while refusing to resign? How does that not lead?
For the same reason as this story out of Lunenburg will get very little press:
There is not enough evidence to charge the prime suspect in a racist graffiti case that rocked Lunenburg late last year, Worcester County District Attorney Joseph D. Early, Jr. said Wednesday.
No charges?
“We have notified the Lunenburg Police Department that the evidence presented to us fails to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime has been committed by a particular person,” wrote Early in an email his office has been sending to Lunenburg residents who have inquired about the case.
But this story was big news, it even appeared on national TV shows,
How can this be? The base story appeared in papers as far away as Atlanta Ga & London England, it made SI.
Yet the DA’s office has suddenly decided that the reasonable doubt standard that used to apply to juries in the case replaces the “ham sandwich” standard that normally applies to indictments.
Now it could be that the DA decided that it would be a waste of taxpayer money, and that a conviction is unlikely but given the reach of the story such a decision would naturally generate press around the world, and stories full of outrage, a DA would normally be worried about that kind of thing and be prepared to answer a lot of tough question from reporters around the world.
I suspect he is not.
You see the primary suspect in this story is no longer the largely white football team in a small town but the mother of the supposed target of the racist graffiti. It is no longer a story about racism, it is about yet another race hoax. If the team had still been the suspect and racism been the theme and the DA a republican the decision to not press charges would be a source of national outrage and coverage but remember the rule we stated yesterday.
I submit & suggest it’s because all of these stories involve Democrats and their national memes and Democrats understand that when it comes to such stories MSM immediately recognizes them as unnewsworthy.
So like the Democrat combatant in the war on women currently doing his legislative work behind bars, the race hoaxer who turned her community upside down with a phony race card and the Democrat’s DA decision not to prosecute are simply not newsworthy.
Where does the town of Lunenburg go to get their reputation back, where does the football team go to get their Thanksgiving game back and who pays for all the police, local state and federal that were used in the attempt to sell this BS?
nothing to see here, move along.
Exit question: While one can argue that the family in the small town is now marked and suffered enough what sort of incentive is created for the next race hoaxer who wants to destroy a person or a town’s reputation for personal or political reasons when they know they are unlikely to face any legal consequence?
Update: The Parents of some of the boys who were initially implicated are none too happy
“I said it before and I’ll say it again, the people that are responsible for this are cowards,” Szabady said. “You know, to do something like this and blame it on kids and just sit back and watch? You’re a coward. And the law will eventually catch up to you.”
Or perhaps not.
By an odd coincidence the AG of Massachusetts is running for governor. I wonder if such a case, if prosecuted might be problematic during the campaign? Then again maybe there is hope
The Lunenburg Police Chief tells WBZ-TV that federal charges could be filed.
Yeah I’m sure Eric Holder will get right on that one.
Update 2:Glenn Reynolds linked to the Boston Herald Story above. Does that mean national republicans will finally use this as a weapon in the war on women BS? If they do and it gets repeated on any national show I predict pressure from national democrats will have Henriquez out of office so fast it will make your head swim.
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