With no new evidence presented and a grand jury 16-count felony indictment at hand, the Cook County State's Attorney's Office suddenly decided to ask the judge in the case to drop all charges against Jussie Smollett and seal all the records of the case.  The only penalty incurred by the actor will be forfeiture of $10,000 posted as bond (small fraction of what he earns per episode of his TV show) and a few hours of "community service" performed at the offices of Jesse Jackson's Operation Push — not even anything useful like picking up litter off the side of a freeway.  To top it off, Smollett addressed the media and maintained his innocence, even as the Chicago Police, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and even the state's attorney's office maintain that he still is guilty.

YouTube screen grab.

John Kass of the Chicago Tribune appropriately scoffs:

The stain of the 16 counts in the indictment was scrubbed right off him.

You might say Foxx bathed him in the waters of the Chicago Way, cleansed him, and made a new man out of him.

And now he's smirking at the city, the mayor, the cops, everyone.  Can't wait until he files that multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

"Foxx expunged it all," said a top Chicago police official.  "The media's really not focusing on that.  What does it mean?  It means you'll never see the (police) interviews or read the notes.

"The case has been expunged.  I can't even tell you if Jussie Smollett was ever arrested or charged," the official said.  "Charged with what?  Faking hate crimes?  Indictments, what indictments?  She wiped him clean."

Foxx isn't saying much.  She hasn't said much at all since it was learned that she'd been contacted about Smollett by lawyer Tina Tchen, Michelle Obama's former chief of staff.

What could possibly explain this stunning cave-in?  My colleague Monica Showalter is undoubtedly correct in writing that this is how the elites, the ruling class, protect their own.  In this case, it's the socialist class that rules Chicago and much of blue-state America.  And M. Catharine Evans is correct that this sort of contempt for the truth is straight out of Marxist dogma, which Jussie imbibed along with milk from his mother.

But that still leaves the question of why now.

To my eyes, the most obvious immediate effect was to drive from the headlines the Mueller Report's exoneration of President Trump from any charge of collusion, and therefore the Democrats' and media's complicity in perpetrating a catastrophically damaging hoax.  The involvement of Tina Tchen, formerly Michelle Obama's top aide and currently helping the scandal-ridden Southern Poverty Law Center find some means of salvaging its survival in the wake of scandals proving its utter moral bankruptcy, makes me think perhaps the fine hand of the Obamas is involved.

The person with the most to lose from sustained attention to the Russia hoax is the 44th president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama.  It is virtually inconceivable to me that Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and James Comey acted without guidance from the POTUS in launching their "counter-intelligence" spying on the Trump campaign.  Don't forget:

On Sept. 2, 2016 — just weeks away from election day — Ms. Page texted Mr. Strzok, her lover, about preparing a report for then-FBI Director James B. Comey because "potus wants to know everything we're doing."

Despite spending millions of dollars on buying a mansion in Washington, D.C. with Valerie Jarrett in residence with him and Michelle, Barack Obama has been notably and uncharacteristically silent.  I suspect he is worried about his role in launching the greatest political scandal in American history more than anything else.  He hasn't even posted his brackets for the NCAA basketball tournament.

But, as the old saying from Tip O'Neill tells us, "All politics are local," so for granular detail on the Windy City motives that might be at work, I turn to our friends at Second City Cop:

Crimesha [state's attorney Kim Foxx] doesn't have the power or authority to make such a boneheaded move on her own.  In fact, she sent her deputy, the person nominally in charge of the prosecution since Crimesha "recused" herself, and let him take all the heat for the "decision."  So who did?  And who benefits, especially with a mayoral election mere days away.

The obvious choice for finger pointing is Prickwrinkle herself.  She's losing badly in every single poll, nearly 60% to low 20%.  She needs to shake up her base.  Is she trying to rouse the "community"?  This might backfire and the decent people are sick and tired of the connected people using them as props.
 Rahm?  He put on a decent performance, but he has connections in Hollywood, needs a new gig away from politics for a while while he plots to take Dickhead Turban Durbin's spot.  Special Ed [Chicago Police superintendent Eddie Johnson] is Rahm's prop — the Accidental Supernintendo who didn't even apply for the job ends up on every TV show and interviewing constantly — but to what end?  A new gig?  Preserving his old gig?  Doing what he was told by other powers, namely Rahm?

Maybe a Crimesha power play to remove herself from [Cook County Board president and Chicago mayor candidate Toni] Prickwrinkle's orbit and losing election apparatus?  She was in Hollywood for the Oscars making all sorts of connections and ends up getting text messages from Mrs. Obama's Chief of Staff asking for political favors resulting in her recusal....which ends up not being much of a recusal.

We get the feeling something else is going on here.

Perhaps this apparent civil war among Chicago Democrats will yield some light on what's really going on beneath the surface.  CBS Chicago reports:

CBS News has learned that lawyers with the Chicago police department are trying to determine if they can legally release evidence in the investigation of Jussie Smollett despite a judge sealing the case.  State prosecutors cleared the "Empire" actor of all 16 felony counts filed against him just over two weeks ago for allegedly lying to police about being the target of a hate crime attack.

And, if Kass is correct in predicting a lawsuit by Jussie against the police, those records may have be to be unsealed in order for the CPD to defend itself.

All eyes now turn to the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, where mail fraud and terroristic threat charges may still be leveled against Smollett.  The postal inspectors — Don't laugh!  They are a highly respected, dedicated police agency that takes its mandate very seriously. — have a mission-critical stake in making sure that highly publicized offenses like this don't go unpunished.  Bad as the federal bureaucracies may be, they don't approach the levels of corruption in Cook County and Chicago.

Meanwhile, Jussie Smollett, basking in the backing of Fox television's and Empire's producers, may think he can go back to being an overpaid actor.  I don't think so.  O.J. Simpson thought the same thing after he beat the rap for murdering his wife and her friend, but as Roger L. Simon wrote yesterday, Jussie will join The Juice as one of the most hated figures in America.