In Chicago, homicides and shootings are surging while carjackings and shoplifting are rampant. The town is becoming more like the Wild West – no law and no order. And much of the blame falls on its chief law enforcement officer, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
Foxx’s record is blotted by botched cases and improprieties (e.g., Jussie Smollett) and public tension with her law enforcement and city partners (i.e., Chicago Police, the City Council and Mayor Lori Lightfoot) who have all bemoaned her conduct and public safety policies. Even Foxx’s longtime chief investigator has had enough and resigned last month to keep his “integrity, morals, and ethics intact.”
While the State’s Attorney has a lot of adversaries, she has one very well-heeled friend: George Soros. Based on campaign donations, the billionaire loves Foxx – lavishing cash on her with $2.7 million poured into her two campaigns to be chief prosecutor.
That money came in the form of two PACs funded almost exclusively by Soros. In 2016, Illinois Safety and Justice PAC spent $708,000 on Foxx with $408,000 coming direct from Soros and the rest via another PAC that Soros finances, Civic Participation Action Fund. In 2020, Foxx got another $2 million from Soros before her heated Democratic primary.
As crime soared and cases crumbled, Foxx has spent weeks away from Cook County on junkets across the country with fellow Soros-backed district attorneys including Los Angeles’ George Gascon, Philadelphia’ Larry Krasner, and the now-former DA for San Francisco Chesa Boudin.
Our study – examining campaign finance reports across the country – identified over $40 million in campaign spending by Soros to elect progressive prosecutors including Foxx. At least 75 Soros-linked prosecutors hold office today – stretching from Orlando to Seattle, Los Angeles to the Washington, DC suburbs. Those district attorneys preside over 40% of homicides and represent jurisdictions covering one in five (72 million) Americans.
Just last December, as Jussie Smollett was found guilty of filing a false police report for his hate crime hoax after Foxx was thrown off the case for her inappropriate intervention in the investigation, the city’s top cop unveiled a public safety plan, a bus driver was savagely beaten, and a man was killed hanging his Christmas lights. But Foxx was nowhere to be found because she was in Los Angeles with dozens of other progressive prosecutors who similarly prefer to drop cases than prosecute them, oppose cash bail, and have presided over record levels of violence and chaos.
That junket, sponsored by the Fair and Just Prosecution group which pushes Foxx-style “decarceration” policies, is also funded by Soros’ largesse. And Foxx has certainly executed that agenda – much to the chagrin of Chicago’s crime victims.
As a Chicago Tribune analysis showed in 2020, Foxx drops significantly more felony cases than her predecessor – something she didn’t dispute but says it doesn’t reflect her commitment to public safety.
One of Foxx’s first acts was to decriminalize low-level theft by unilaterally raising the felony theft threshold. Then, as the Miracle Mile was looted in the summer of 2020, Foxx declared she wouldn’t prosecute those offenders.
That commitment appears lacking as Foxx has failed to put violent repeat offenders behind bars. It took five months of denunciations and public shaming for Foxx to file charges in an Austin-neighborhood shoot-out last fall that left an 8-year-old girl dead. And this April, a police commander overruled Foxx’s office and filed charges against an admitted killer – already on parole for attempted murder.
Foxx’s priorities are perplexing to erstwhile allies including Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who last March chastised the prosecutor for using the resentencing statute to reduce the terms of violent offenders.
Perhaps, Mayor Lightfoot said it best when she said Foxx’s decisions were sending the city “into chaos.” But that wouldn’t be possible if Foxx didn’t have the friends to bankroll her campaigns.
