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Cook County state attorney Kim Foxx is retiring from political activities after her husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer, her office confirmed Monday.
Foxx’s husband Kelley Foxx is set to have surgery this week, as Politico first reported. The state attorney’s office has confirmed that Kim Foxx will be stepping down from the campaign to help him recover and take care of his family.
Kim Foxx is running for a second term against Republican Pat O’Brien in the November general election. She won a contested Democratic primary in March against three challengers, emerging with just over 50% of the vote, and is set to win re-election in the heavily Democratic county.
The news that she would be stepping down from the campaign came the same day that a special prosecutor said in her report that Kim Foxx and his office committed “substantial abuse of confidentiality and operational failures” in dealing with the case against actor Jussie Smollett.
A Cook County grand jury indicted Smollett in March 2019 with 16 counts of reporting an alleged racist and homophobic attack, which police said they staged against himself because he was “dissatisfied with his salary “while working as an actor. on “Empire”. All charges against Smollett were dropped later that month in a surprise move fueled speculation of impropriety in Kim Foxx’s office.
But special prosecutor Dan Webb said in his report on Monday that there was no evidence to support the criminal charges against Kim Foxx or anyone working in the state attorney’s office.
Charges against Smollett were reinstated in February. He pleaded not guilty, his lawyer saying in a statement at the time that the renewed prosecution effort was “clearly a matter of politics, not justice.”
In a statement on Monday, Kim Foxx’s office said the report “ends any involvement of outside influence or criminal activity on the part of the Cook County District Attorney’s Office (CCSAO) and the Police Department Chicago (CPD). As the report unequivocally confirms, State Attorney Foxx was at no time involved in the decision-making process regarding the Jussie Smollett case and there was no outside influence on it. process. “
His office added that it “categorically rejects” the “special prosecutor’s” characterizations of his exercise of prosecutorial discretion and private or public statements as “abuse of discretion” or misrepresentation to the public. “
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