CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Special Prosecutor Dan Webb announced Monday he had concluded his investigation into the handling of Jussie Smollett’s hate-crime prosecution and found that Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and her office put out several false and misleading statements about the case.
Among his conclusions, Webb said he found evidence establishing “substantial abuses of discretion” in prosecuting and dismissing the initial criminal charges filed against Smollett, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
He also found evidence “that may rise to the level of a violation of legal ethics by State’s Attorney Foxx” and other Cook County prosecutors “relating to false and/or misleading public statements made about the prosecution,” but he did not find evidence that would support criminal charges against Foxx or any other Cook County prosecutor.
In a statement, Foxx said her office “categorically rejects” the assertion that any actions were “abuses of discretion,” but welcomed the reports overall conclusions.
“This report puts to rest any implications of outside influence or criminal activity on the part of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Chicago Police Department,” Foxx’s office said in the statement. “As the report unequivocally confirms, State’s Attorney Foxx was not involved in the decision-making process regarding the Jussie Smollett case at any point and there was no outside influence on that process. ”
“The [state’s attorney’s office] categorically rejects [Webb’s] characterizations of its exercises of prosecutorial discretion and private or public statements as ‘abuses of discretion’ or false statements to the public,” Foxx’s office said. “While the release does not say so, any implication that statements made by the CCSAO were deliberately inaccurate is untrue. As a result of the issues addressed in the press release, and of discussions of them beforehand, the CCSAO has already made a number of changes to its operations, including the hiring of a new CCSAO ethics officer and more separation of their function from the administration of the office, and strengthening the recusal plan with clear guidelines and explicit definitions of conflicts of interest.”