Special Prosecutor Dan News Today

Former Cook County Judge Dan Locallo said the state’s attorney’s column amounts to an “attempt to divert any discussion as to why her office acted in the manner that they did.”

Smollett’s jail sentence is excessive, but he brought it on himself. Most important, let’s hope we never hear again about “substantial abuses of discretion” from the state’s attorney’s office.

After disgraced actor Jussie Smollett was sentenced Thursday to 150 days in jail for staging a hoax hate crime, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx lambasted the court proceedings as "mob justice" and a politically motivated "kangaroo prosecution."

During a tense two hours on the stand, the actor said his alleged accomplices, brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, offered to clear Smollett for $2 million payoff.

In January 2019, Osundairo stated that Smollett, who he considered a close friend, asked him and his brother, Olabinjo, to help stage the attack. This, after Osundairo said Smollett felt the television studio where they worked was not taking a piece of hate mail seriously.

"I was confused. I looked puzzled. He [Smollett] explained to me that he wanted me to fake beat him up," said Abimbola Osundairo, who met the actor while he worked as an extra on "Empire" in 2017.

The ongoing probe has been replete with one stunning twist after another.