Two top executives in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, including the chief ethics officer, are resigning in the wake of the Jussie Smollett case, The Post has learned.
April Perry, the ethics officer who’s worked with State’s Attorney Kim Foxx since January 2017, told The Post she submitted her resignation letter on Monday.
In addition, one of Perry’s underlings, Mark Rotert, reportedly submitted his resignation on March 27, the day after news broke that all 16 felony charges against Smollett would be dropped, the Chicago Sun-Times said.
The resignations come amidst a wave of backlash over Foxx’s handling of Smollett’s case and a looming independent inspector general’s review over the investigation and her recusal.
Perry is the staffer who announced Foxx was recusing herself from Smollett’s case on Feb. 13 in an email to other state’s attorneys in the department, according to documents made public through a records request.
“Please note that State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is recused from the investigation involving victim Jussie Smollett. First Assistant State’s Attorney Joe Magats is serving as the Acting State’s Attorney for this matter,” the email stated.
Even while Foxx was “recused,” she continued to meddle in the case, according to documents released this week. She later said her recusal was “informal” and she did not mean it in a “legal sense” but instead a “colloquial sense.”
In a statement, Foxx said the people of Chicago were “well served” by Rotert’s leadership, and added that Perry was a “valuable resource.”