South Cook News

Illinois 17th District Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison has suggested Kim Foxx resign in the wake of the Jussie Smollett case. 

“It's been made clear by the special prosecutor's investigation that Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx is also culpable in this detestable fiasco," Morrison said in an email earlier this year. "Bravo to WGN News reporter Ben Bradley, who nailed this great point.”  

Morrison is urging Foxx to step down.

“So the question remains, what happens next? It's very clear that Kim Foxx's office had its thumb squarely on the scale of justice for a celebrity friend. Elected officials in Cook County should muster their courage and call for her to resign, I’ll start! In the interest of restoring professional integrity back to the Cook County State's Attorney Office and restoring the public's confidence, I call on Kim Foxx to resign from office immediately.”

The Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission said it was not pursuing an investigation into Foxx’s bar license. It noted, "as a matter of policy, the ARDC does not review or direct the discretionary decisions of elected officials who may also be lawyers absent some clear indication of fraud, criminal activity or other serious misconduct by the lawyer-official." 

"Judging by this letter, it appears that elected officials who are also attorneys are immune from [an] investigation into their professional conduct unless it’s what the ARDC considers serious," Martin Preib, a former Chicago FOP spokesman, who previously contacted the ARDC told Chicago City Wire. 

Former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Dan Webb wrote in a report that Foxx committed "serious abuses of discretion" in handling the Smollett criminal case. Foxx and her team also presented "conflicting stories" of who and why Foxx's administration negotiated their arrangement with Smollett, according to the investigation. 

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Webb refused to answer a question from a Sun-Times reporter in December about whether he had transmitted his report to the Commission, and he also did not respond to a CCW inquiry about if he had filed a formal complaint.