Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has announced she will not seek reelection in 2024.
Foxx made the announcement during a speech to the City Club of Chicago on Tuesday afternoon.
According to published reports, the announcement was not much of a surprise, as reports of her decision had leaked on Monday night. Reports indicated she had told others of her decision, including Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, days earlier.
When she steps aside when her term ends next year, it will draw to a close a tumultuous eight years with Foxx overseeing criminal prosecutions in the country’s second most populous county and third largest city.
Foxx has repeatedly stood as a lightning rod for controversy since before she was even elected as State’s Attorney.
Foxx was first elected in 2016, with the strong support of her mentor, Cook County Board President and Democratic Party powerbroker Toni Preckwinkle.
She also received significant support from left-wing billionaire political financier George Soros. Foxx became the first of a wave of left-wing county and city prosecutors elected with the help of Soros’ money, with the goal of softening criminal enforcement in the name of racial and social justice.
In her successful 2016 and 2020 election campaigns, Foxx received millions of dollars in direct financial contributions from Soros’ organizations.
Foxx has since made good on such support from progressive interests, instituting social justice-minded policies and reforms, such as programs intended to help low-level offenders expunge their records and that have helped people who claimed they were wrongfully convicted to win their innocence.
Upon taking office, Foxx became the first Black woman to serve as Cook County State’s Attorney. She has since often ascribed racism to her political opponents when they criticized her policy and prosecutorial decisions.
In her speech, Foxx again repeatedly referenced her race and gender. She noted, for instance, that “as a Black woman from Cabrini, … my presence alone was disruption.”
Foxx also used her speech to defend her decisions, including her focus on undoing convictions she said were based on false evidence or coerced confessions.
Police and other public officials have clashed with her on her choices and policies, asserting she wrongly emphasized the rights of the accused over the need to prosecute criminals.
For instance, immediately after taking office, Foxx directed her office to no longer charge shoplifters with felonies unless they stole more than $1,000 worth of goods.
Those practices were mirrored in other major cities overseen by so-called “Soros prosecutors.” And in the years that have followed, social media has overflowed with videos of brazen shoplifters, including many who simply walk out of stores with shopping carts or garbage bags full of stolen merchandise.
Critics have cited such abundant theft problems with leading retailers like Walgreens, Target and Walmart to begin locking up their merchandise behind plexiglass in such cities, or closing stores repeatedly targeted by thieves altogether to cut their losses.
At a minimum, critics said, the lax approach to prosecuting retail theft has resulted in higher prices paid by everyone else.
Foxx said the prosecutorial policy changes were needed to address alleged unjust outcomes, in which nonviolent offenders, including many who are Black or who suffered from mental illness or drug addiction, were sent to prison for allegedly small crimes.
During Foxx’s tenure, violent crime in Chicago also spiked to levels not seen in decades.
Foxx has blamed that rise in crime on the Covid pandemic.
Police, however, have repeatedly blamed the rise in crime on Foxx’s prosecutorial decisions. Foxx has said she is requiring police to provide more evidence before bringing felony charges against offenders.
Police, however, say her office has habitually declined to prosecute criminals, including violent offenders, even when evidence of their guilt is at least sufficient to press charges.
And when they do prosecute, critics have asserted Foxx’s office has repeatedly declined to properly charge offenders with the highest criminal charge possible.
Foxx, for instance, has come under fire from Chicago city officials, including Mayor Lori Lightfoot, for her decisions declining to throw the book at carjackers plaguing Chicago and allegedly famously declining to press felony charges against people involved in a “Wild West-style” shootout at a home on Chicago’s South Side, allegedly because the people involved were “mutual combatants.”
Most recently, Foxx’s office has come under fire for refusing to charge two teens with felonies after they crashed a stolen car into another vehicle at a high speed, killing a 6-month-old baby inside.
Further, police and the mayor have repeatedly criticized decisions by Foxx and Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans to deploy policies allowing offenders to be released from jail and placed on electronic home monitoring, allowing a number of them to commit more crimes, including, in some cases, murder.
Foxx’s prosecutorial philosophy gained international notoriety in 2019, when she famously dropped charges against actor Jussie Smollet. The Black gay actor has since been convicted of lying to police who were investigating his claims that he was assaulted on the streets of downtown Chicago at 2 a.m. on a frigid night in January by white male supporters of former President Donald Trump, allegedly because he was Black and gay.
Police have said Smollett’s claims were a hoax.
While Foxx claims to have recused herself from the case – a decision legal observers have noted was not legally possible – the decision drew outrage from throughout the country, including from her prosecutor peers in Illinois, Chicago Police and then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Cook County Judge Michael Toomin appointed former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb to serve as a special prosecutor in the case, ultimately leading to Smollett’s conviction.
As part of his duties, Webb also investigated Foxx’s handling of the Smollett case, with an eye toward discovering if Foxx had been part of a behind-the-scenes effort to allow Smollett to walk free.
In his official report, Webb cleared Foxx of any potential criminal wrongdoing, but said her decisions were ethically suspect, at best. Webb said Foxx and her office abused their discretion as prosecutors, and issued multiple false, deceptive and misleading statements about the case and Foxx’s conduct.
In that report, Webb indicated he had referred the matter to Illinois state regulators overseeing attorney discipline for potential professional action against Foxx for her conduct in the Smollett case.
In response, Foxx attacked Judge Toomin and Webb, saying she was a victim of a racist “kangaroo court.”
To this point, Foxx has received no discipline for those direct public attacks on the integrity of sitting judges and other officers of the court.
In her speech to the City Club, Foxx lamented that her name would forever be attached to Jussie Smollett’s.
In addition to the public criticism, Foxx’s tenure at the State’s Attorney’s office has also been marked by an exodus of veteran prosecutors, including some of those at the top of the organization, who have publicly criticized her decisions and policies related to enforcing the law and protecting crime victims.
In her speech, Foxx made clear that, while she is not going to seek reelection in 2024, she intends to serve out the remainder of her term and is “not going anywhere.”