Good; corrupt AG office be damned. Drag every last scent out of that liar's wallet. Don't forget to add legal costs on top of the $130,000 to cover any taxpayer costs required to bring a civil suit to trial.
So you'd be fine with the police making up some crime against you, doing a bs investigation, and then charging you for the investigation and resources they spent on it even if you're completely cleared/charges are never even filed against you, right? Because that's what you're arguing for.
Like, obviously that's not what happened in the Smollett case, and he probably is guilty. But by saying this should be done, that's the pandora's box you're nonetheless opening: that a person's guilt in court and whether they're charged or not doesn't matter at all and they can still be fined for the investigation and all that regardless because of how the right people "know" they're really guilty regardless.
This type of thing is exactly the type of thing that can easily have ripple effects like that outside the case in question. That guilt and innocence in court don't matter at all, and the city should be able to fine you for the investigation regardless of what does or doesn't happen in court doesn't matter and the city knows better.
It's easy to say "but Smollett is guilty." Doesn't matter. There's an avenue for that, which is charging him with filing a false police report. They opted not to do that. That may be due to factors such as corruption in the DA's office or something of the sort, but the answer to that is dealing with said corruption, not treating him as guilty anyway as doing that will have unintended repercussions outside of this case.
I mean, I suppose if one doesn't care about those repercussions though and just want to make sure that Smollett is punished regardless of how that would be used to fuck over other people that don't deserve it in the future, that they want him punished that badly, that's their prerogative I suppose... But I'm rightly going to judge people if they're willing to go that far and they don't give a fuck if innocent people get screwed over or not just to make sure Smollett is punished, as that's mighty damn telling if that's where they're priorities lie, making sure this one person is punished no matter what, damn the consequences (especially when it's oh so easy to say that when they won't be the ones facing those consequences).
