Report details ‘failure’ in handling of 1st Smollett case

“The fact that such a significant mischaracterization could be asserted without sufficient vetting, repeated by figureheads of the (Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office) and then never corrected or clarified — particularly in a case the (office) knows has captured the public attention — is unacceptable for an office that must be transparent and maintain public confidence,” Webb’s report states.

Webb also found that Foxx improperly changed her public position about the strength of the evidence against Smollett. After calling the case against him “strong,” she wrote in a Chicago Tribune editorial shortly after the charges were dropped that securing a conviction was “uncertain.” That pivot was “false and misleading,” Webb concluded.

Foxx’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the report. When the initial findings were released last year, the state’s attorney’s office said it welcomed Webb’s findings that no one on the staff committed a crime and that no undue outside influences affected prosecutors’ decisions, but rejected any characterization of abuses of discretion or false public statements.

Webb also pursued the investigation against Smollett, and a grand jury in 2020 indicted him on new charges of lying to police. A jury convicted the 39-year-old earlier this month on five of six counts of disorderly conduct, a low-level felony.