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Home » Kim Foxx’s recusal from the Smollett case: not a recusal-recusal

Kim Foxx’s recusal from the Smollett case: not a recusal-recusal

The New Neo Posted on by

Oh my:

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx did not “formally” recuse herself from the Jussie Smollett case — she only did so “colloquially,” prosecutors said on Wednesday.

“Colloquially”? As in, “Not really; just pretending”?

More:

“Out of an abundance of caution, the decision to recuse herself was made to address potential questions of impartiality based upon familiarity with potential witnesses in the case,” Foxx’s spokeswoman Tandra Simonton said on Feb. 20.

Top aide Robert Foley released a separate statement, saying Foxx “had conversations with a family member of Jussie Smollett about the incident and their concerns and facilitated a connection to the Chicago Police Department, who were investigating the incident.”

But Ellis clarified that Foxx’s recusal “was a colloquial use of the term rather than in its legal sense.”

“Instead, in an abundance of caution, Fox informally separated herself from the decision-making over the case and left it to her Assistants, as happens in 99.9% of all cases handled by the Office,” Ellis said.

The why did she mention it at all?

I think I have the answer: she mentioned it in order to give the false appearance of a real recusal when none had occurred. After all, no one expects the State’s Attorney to use a legal word such as “recusal” in some sort of colloquial sense; everyone would think she meant it in its technical legal sense. I’m not sure what conversational circles Foxx and Ellis hang around in, but let’s just say the word “recusal” doesn’t usually come up in any colloquial sense at, say, my monthly book group, when we’re eating dinner and shooting the breeze.

“Hey, I think I’ll recuse myself from dessert”? Nah, doesn’t happen.

I very much doubt that Foxx thought any of these machinations of hers would ever be revealed. Which in a way is odd, because she must have known or certainly should have known that the decision to let Smollett off, as well as the fact that she didn’t even give the mayor or police superintendent a heads-up beforehand, would cause widespread anger, dismay, and outrage, and that it could blow back right at her. And it’s not as though she’s been a stranger to controversy, either, so there’s no excuse for such naivete.

[NOTE: The pressures brought to bear on Foxx to drop this may have been very powerful. Here’s the tale being told; I don’t know how much of it is true, but it sounds plausible. After reading quite a bit about Foxx, including an interview I quoted at length yesterday, I think Foxx is certainly ultra-liberal and inclined to drop charges in minor cases, but she’s no fool and surely she knew this was no minor case. So as I said, I think pressure is the answer.]

[NOTE II: The title of this post is a reference to this statement by Whoopi Goldberg.]

Comments

Kim Foxx’s recusal from the Smollett case: not a recusal-recusal — 34 Comments

  2. ‘But Ellis clarified that Foxx’s recusal “was a colloquial use of the term rather than in its legal sense.”’

    Oh come on, that’s a mistake anyone could make….

  3. Jussie’s lawyers are hardly the best and the brightest (one of them just this morning asserting ludicrously that perhaps the Nigerian brothers had been in “whiteface”), so the most logical explanation for the absurd recent turn of events is that a purely political fix was in play, perhaps from the very beginning. Well-connected leftists in Cook County (probably the most corrupt in the nation) were determined that one of their own, the son of a comrade of Angela Davis and the Panthers and a self-appointed Leader of the Resistance, would not be punished for his heroic action in exposing the evil that lies within all the supporters of the Bad Orange Man.

  5. I can’t help but reflect on how–over the decades since, say, WWII–the United States has slid–slowly, almost imperceptibly, and now faster and faster–down the slippery slope toward some form of dystopia.

    I’m pretty sure, for instance, that “in the old days” a public official wouldn’t be so brazen in their public lies, and they wouldn’t be able to get away with it so easily.

    But, now, given the increasing number of our citizens who have not been given the knowledge of rhetoric and the intellectual tools to dissect who our politicians and public “servants” say, combined by our deliberate Balkanization and division, it appears that our officials and others in the public eye feel that they can get away with such brazen irregularities and lies.

    Thus, it is reported today that–despite Smollett having identified a picture of the two African brothers who he paid $3,500 dollars by his personal check to stage the incident, despite store video showing the brothers buying the rope and other props for the supposed racial attack, and despite the evidence that Smollette was talking to them by cellphone–both before and after the incident.

    Now that Smolette has again asserted his complete innocence, his lawyer says that, well, since Smollett claimed to have been attacked by two white men, perhaps the two brothers were wearing white face at the time of the attack.

    This shows just how stupid and gullible they think the American public is.

  7. It is quite possible Foxx is an affirmative action graduate of law school and did not think long and hard about the possible repercussions but just thought this matter would quickly blow over because she is well connected. She forgot that the evil orange man can tell Barr that he really should have the FBI take a look at the shenanigans in Chicago.

  9. Thanks for doing this one Neo. I love the opening “Oh my:” It seems like fraud to me.

  11. Given the white face idea they just threw out there, perhaps their next try will be to say that it was really those white, white, very white aliens from the Andromeda galaxy who are really the racist MAGA hat wearing culprits?

    After all, you know how some of these ETs are.

  12. Pikers. In the 1960 Presidential election, Crook County waited until downstate had reported their results and then made up the difference so that Kennedy won Illinois.

  13. The ever-brilliant Heather Mac has just posted, at City Journal, one of her always excellent pieces, entitled “When Prosecutorial Discretion is Woke”, concerning the importance of hard-left identity politics in the unfolding of this case.

  14. Described as the fastest FOIA result the CPD has released their case files on Smollet. This hoax is not going to fade away any time soon.

  15. parker & Ray: no doubt Foxx forgot that the CPD has “six ways from Sunday” to take down someone who disses them; and that Trump is, in legal fact, the commander in chief of the FBI.

    Would those brothers in whiteface be the reason Rahm Emanuel called Foxx’s actions a whitewash?

  17. Gotta love Rahm Emanuel law-splainin’ to Wolf Blitzer.

    https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/27/rahm-emanuel-jussie-smollett-wolf-blitzer-cnn/

    “Was the full picture painted by the evidence perhaps not as compelling as what was presented to the Grand Jury?” Blitzer asked Emanuel.
    “Well, wait a second. The evidence presented to the Grand Jury is what brought the charges,” Emanuel replied.
    “Some questions [arose] in the subsequent weeks from more evidence that might be out there,” Blitzer insisted.
    Emanuel shook his finger in front of the camera and said, “That’s not what the state’s attorney just said today.”

  18. Of course, during the days when the Soviets had an especially ruthless and iron grip, it almost didn’t matter what the people thought. In a way, the more ludicrous Pravda was, the more it showed the people how little power they had to change anything, and represented their leaders’ laughing in their faces.

    no… not to the people i know… you had to read it so that your comments matched or else what? you had no way to know something was ludicrous or not unless you lived near border areas and illegally got outside news.

    they could not leave or travel
    they could not get news from other places
    their mail was looked at
    they had no phones at home, but went to phone offices, which would cut the line if something was starting to be said, and that is not good.

    if Japanese soldiers continued to believe the war was still on in the 1970s
    why? No frame of reference!!

    In January 1972, Corporal Shoichi Yokoi, who served under Masashi It?, was captured on Guam

    In October 1972, Private 1st Class Kinshichi Kozuka held out with Lt. Onoda for 28 years until he was killed in a shootout with Philippine police

    they had no way to know it stopped
    russian people mostly had no way to know much of anything

    heck, you couldn’t even use a map to go from one point to another point
    1) you needed permission and papers to travel
    2) the maps were all wrong for military purposes.

    however, the soviets had some of the most detailed maps of things in the USA far beyond what the USA had – so we bought em.

    and the work on the people started early, from early school, on up through the young pioneers, etc…

    most did NOT know what was or wasnt ludicrous!! the only ones that might know are politicians, or scientists, or the very few that had some outside travels, etc. but that usually meant you were part of the system in some capacity

    Red terror meant you couldnt be sure of anything

    The entire Bolshevik project is premised on the idea that you can make government scientific. There is that wonderful moment in the 1870s, when everything seemed as if it was about to be explainable in terms of everything else. Marxism is supposed to be that science, the science that will actually put all the other sciences in the science of the state. But the clever, scientific community is realizing it doesn’t work, that scientism doesn’t work. There’s an immediate crisis. Stalin’s response is to conceal it, to talk over it, to look for practical solutions.

    He tried to get the young educated as fast as possible in batches, in brigades.

    On the other hand, he tried to wipe out generations that were operating under the old patronage system [that funded scientific research.] Stalin’s attempt was to do away with the patronage system by becoming the only patron. By making the state the only possible patron, you have this absurd situation in which even as engineers are being paid more than they’ve ever been paid before, you’re also getting show trials in which engineers are shown the door or exiled or shot.

    there was no frame of reference…
    no planes from other countries flew over
    little of any news came through the jamming signals.

    SOVIET UNION ENDS YEARS OF JAMMING OF RADIO LIBERTY
    https://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/01/world/soviet-union-ends-years-of-jamming-of-radio-liberty.html
    that was 1988 NY Times…

    The Soviets have justified jamming on the ground that foreign stations were trying to undermine the Soviet system with hostile propaganda. Jamming has been particularly effective in big cities. Some Soviet citizens have regularly taken their shortwave sets outside the city limits to try to pick up broadcasts in areas where the jamming is less intense.

    so the newspapers were very important to read..

    i am quoting others cause when i assert on my own, its a no no
    but if i am imperical, you have to go argue with the rest of academia, historians, etc

    Thus, the Russian populace regarded the major publications with a great deal of cynicism.

    The papers were, however, information transmission belts, so people would try to decipher what was going on by reading them. Soviet papers were written in such a way that the beginnings of articles would have a list of what was going well, and then would transition with a “however” to the real news. So, many people would read from the “however” in the hopes to get at the real story.

    this was reflected in the jokes:
    One morning one of the workers at a factory comes in a half an hour late. The politburo arrests him for sabotaging production.
    The next morning, a man comes in a half an hour early to work. The politburo arrests him because since he has come to work early clearly he is a spy come to sabotage machines and sabotage production.
    The next morning, a man comes in exactly on time. The politburo comes and arrests him for owning a Western watch.

    A customer goes into a Soviet butcher shop and asks for a steak. “Sorry,” the butcher says, “no steak today.” “A beef roast instead then. ” ” Sorry no roast. ” ” Some pork chops perhaps? Or lamb chops? ” ” Maybe next week. ” ” Some hamburger. . . Bacon. . . Sausage?” “No, no, no. We are all sold out. ” Finally the customer gives up & leaves. His assistant asks the butcher, “What was that, some kind of crazy man?” “Crazy, yes. But what a memory! “

    A man walks into a shop. He asks the clerk, “You don’t have any meat?” The clerk says, “No, here we don’t have any fish. The shop that doesn’t have any meat is across the street.

    jokes were serious things
    not a joke: A man was jailed 15 years for calling Joseph Stalin a fathead. One year for sedition, 14 years for revealing a state secret

    here is the link to soviet jokes declassified by the CIA..
    https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP89G00720R000800040003-6.pdf

  19. Did Foxx think her machinations would be revealed? I’d say yes, but there’s this from Neo’s Nat.Rev. link,

    “… deep-pocketed campaign finance mega-bundler Tina Tchen”

    Oh, Tchen is the Terry McAuliffe of the Obama machine. I figure that as long as Foxx can stay out of jail (virtually certain), she will rotate out of her Chicago justice job, into one that will pay $300K to $400K per year.

  20. Actually, I think Ms Foxx simply had no idea who high this miscarriage of justice would blow?

    It’s like John Brenner; one would assume he must have been intelligent to head up the agency; instead it turns out he was Rosanna Rosanna-Danna in the flesh.

  21. AesopFan says,

    “no doubt Foxx forgot that … Trump is, in legal fact, the commander in chief of the FBI.”

    On the one hand Aesop is obviously correct, but I’m genuinely confused because (from the Nat.Rev. article again),

    She [Tchen] suggested that Foxx lean on Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson to yield to the FBI and she shared an unidentified Smollett family member’s cellphone number with Foxx. Foxx texted back that she had done as requested and that Chief Johnson was “going to make the ask.” The unidentified relative rejoiced: “OMG this would be a huge victory.”

    So yielding to the FBI would be a huge victory for Michelle, Tina, and Jussie?? What am I missing? The FBI can prosecute federal crimes but not state or local crimes. Filing a false police report would not be prosecuted the FBI. Mail fraud is a federal crime and can carry stiff penalties. Or is the FBI so far gone, that not even Donald Trump can fix it?

  22. TANGENT WARNING
    Snow on Pine on March 28, 2019 at 3:44 pm at 3:44 pm said:
    P.S. To show just how far we have fallen, in just one aspect of our culture/society, take a look at this trip back to a better, a much more innocent and naive perhaps, but, a time of much more freedom and not in the clutches of the nanny state.

    See https://pjmedia.com/parenting/8-fun-and-or-dangerous-activities-enjoyed-by-past-generations-that-todays-kids-will-never-experience/
    * * *
    The article was good, and the memories added in the comments were great.
    IMNSHO, this is the kind of nostalgia that Trump tapped into with MAGA, as expressed in a lot of ways.
    There were a couple of nay-sayers missing the main point (taking things literally instead of seriously), but most recognized that the only way to raise independent, confident children was to let them BE independent, and learn the consequences of their mistakes the hard way when the stakes were relatively low (with some exceptions – RTWT – I never knew there were that many ways to deliberately court disaster).
    There were a couple of points made about WHY kids could do all that stuff, though, and they speak to the major changes in the world since the sixties cratered most moral values.
    There were some objections that these complaints about “unsafe” times are not true (linking to a WaPo article behind a paywall), but perception is what drives politics — and it’s hard to be convincing that “everybody is safer now” when the rest of your journalistic output is hysteria on hyperdrive.

    COMMENTERS SAID:
    “If you think that you were actually completely unsupervised while running around all day you need to think again.

    Most of the houses had a woman home all day and she was looking out the window checking on the kids. She had your mom’s number and would be right on the spot when trouble happened. Now many neighborhoods are nothing but empty houses all day.”

    “Yes it was safe back then for kids. It isn’t now. This can’t be denied. We had a homogeneous population back then. Mothers were home. Everyone knew everyone else and looked out for each other. Now moms are working. Neighborhoods are empty during the day. No one is around if help is needed. Now we have imported the third world into our country. Thousands of Americans are dying at the hands of illegal aliens every year. We have sex traffickers looking for their next victims. We also used to have mental institutions where mental patients were locked up. Now those are closed down. Thanks to the left it’s a different world now”

    “Up until the 60’s, NYC had shooting clubs in the basement of just about every school. Kids would bring their guns on the subway and give them to the gym teacher until the training, and then the kids would take them home.
    No one murdered anyone or shot up their school. But according to the libs, it’s all the guns,…
    https://www.creators.com/re…

    Avatar
    Bruiser in Houston M Aurelius • 3 hours ago
    They’ll nver admit that it’s all about the culture.

    Avatar
    M Aurelius Bruiser in Houston • 3 hours ago
    You can’t install the socialist Utopia by being truthful”

  23. To Snow again: I want to add my own “kids were more independent” story, although I certainly nodded my head at many on the writer’s list.

    My Grandad was born in the early 1890s, to a farm/ranch family (whatever they could do where they were living at the time).
    On one occasion, he drove their small herd to market by himself.
    He was 12.

  24. Snow, wonderful column from back in the day when kids were still allowed to be “free-range.” Thanks. :>))

  25. Neo, it would be a mistake to ascribe much intellectual horsepower to the Cook County State’s Attorney.
    I would remind all that the office was also held by Richard M. Daley.
    It’s a political post to which a person with certain public qualifications is appointed, via a well-fixed political machine (intended to give the appearance of an “election”.)
    The catastrophe of the Cook County, Illinois justice system is getting deeper and deeper; the installation of a known, viciously anti-police second-tier machine seat warmer is an indication of the angle of the descent.
    To those curious as to the real-world doings of the Chicago Machine from the perspective of the police, I recommend the Second City Cop blog, and perhaps the very solid CWB “Crime in Boystown” website.
    The Smollett case is fascinating, but it’s also another slap in the face to the remaining real police in the city of Chicago. At that, Ms. Foxx couldn’t help herself, never mind the Obama influence.

  26. Artfldgr:

    I am basing my comments about the Russian newspapers on what I’ve read from ex-Soviet citizens. I’m sure there were a lot of people who believed the papers and a lot who didn’t, but I’ve never seen statistics on the relative numbers.

  27. W. P. Zeller:

    I was basing my estimation of the intellect of Ms. Foxx on the lengthy interview with her I read. She seemed smart enough to me.

  28. Not to worry, folks, not to worry. When Foxx runs for her next office, which I hear will be mayor, a nice campaign contribution of $100K or more will come from Jussie. “You scratch my back, I scratch yours.” It’s the Chicago way.

  29. AesopFan: We had lawn darts and we enjoyed them! They were called Jarts. You can still find them on ebay.

    As I recall the story of their banning, a father lost a daughter to a Jart in the head and made it his life’s mission to get Jarts banned. He succeeded. Kinda inspiring in its way.

    I don’t know where I draw the line. But kids today are way, way too supervised for my taste. My friends and I were totally free-range kids.

    Maybe this over-supervision is how we got this Red Guards generation of young people.

  30. My friends and I were totally free-range kids.

    As Sam Kinison would say, “I’M LUCKY TO BE ALIVE! OH. OH. OHHH!”

  31. Aesopfan—I know that, like it or not, as Greek Philosopher Heraclitus pointed out about 2,600 years ago, change is the nature of life, of everything, and that—in the end—all things change.

    However, there is good change—change for the better, and there is bad change—change for the worse, and some things are good, and deserve to survive in the midst of all this inevitable change.

    I think that a lot of older people who grew up in earlier times, and many of the people in the middle of the country–where more of the old ways and ethos still prevail–are saddened and appalled at what our culture and society have become, and long for the many things that were good about the old days and the old ways.

    That is my feeling too.

    The problem is, of course, that things have been so transmogrified, so much poison has been injected into every portion and aspect of our culture/society, so much that had solidity and worth has been replaced by meretricious, glittering trash, so much that had some beauty and grace has been replaced by what is depraved and ugly, so much has been deliberately subverted and destroyed, that we can never go back to the way it was–to the overall conditions, to the mind-set, to the unconscious innocence and balance, to the conventions, and to the feeling of freedom (illusory though it might have been) that we had.

    And that destruction has been very deliberate.

    See my earlier posts about the Left’s deliberate Gramscian subversion and destruction of our common knowledge and history base, and the many things that make up our social cohesion. About the Left’s deliberate cultivation of dissatisfaction and despair, so that the Left’s solutions to the conditions/problems they have deliberately created will be more eagerly and more readily accepted.

    Many changes over the decades since WWII—economic, social, cultural, political—were inevitable.

    However, in many cases the Left has ridden on their backs, has added energy to them, has managed them, influenced, and directed them to their benefit, and to the detriment of our traditional American way of life.

    The Left’s much vaunted “progress” has deliberately destroyed a mind-set and overall way of life that I thought, whatever its faults—and they were many–deserved to survive and to flourish.

  32. My friend says Foxx is a dangerous imbecile. I say she is a moronic incompetent. Is there a difference? She probably fits both characterizations. George Soros contributed more than $400,000 to get her elected after the Laquan McDonald fiasco. It is part of his plan to get low level offices around the country filled with sympathetic apparatchiks. She is a country prosecutor. Doesn’t seem threatening, right?
    Fortunately, the egregious Jussie Smollett and his legal team duped Foxx with Hollywood and Obama connections (Foxx was swanning around the Oscars this year), and then doing victory laps proclaiming Jussie’s innocence and victimhood. Foxx’s office, you see, failed to require Jussie to allocute his guilt and acceptance of responsibility for the hoax. So Jussie says he’s innocent because the charges never would have been dropped otherwise. Of course, he’s wrong. Someone as stupid and starstruck as Foxx is likely to do anything at any time. Just have Michelle or Viola call her.

  34. TommyJay on March 28, 2019 at 7:05 pm at 7:05 pm said:
    …
    So yielding to the FBI would be a huge victory for Michelle, Tina, and Jussie?? What am I missing? The FBI can prosecute federal crimes but not state or local crimes. Filing a false police report would not be prosecuted the FBI. Mail fraud is a federal crime and can carry stiff penalties. Or is the FBI so far gone, that not even Donald Trump can fix it?
    * * *
    Gotta admit I wondered about that, but maybe it was a bluff of some kind — I don’t have an answer.

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