Tina Tchen, former chief of staff to former first lady Michelle Obama, in new court filings, argues the subpoena filed by retired Judge Sheila O’Brien is improper.
WASHINGTON — Tina Tchen, former chief of staff to former first lady Michelle Obama, stepped up her fight on Wednesday to quash a subpoena digging for information about her role in Jussie Smollett’s alleged fake hate crime case.
Lawyers for Tchen, an attorney who heads the Chicago office of Buckley LLP, were filing a motion to quash the subpoena in Cook County Circuit Court, the latest twist in a case that started out with Smollett, an openly gay actor who starred in “Empire,” initially claiming that he was the victim of a hate crime attack.
Smollett ended up being charged with 16 counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly staging the attack but those charges were abruptly dropped. The actor forfeited the $10,000 bond he posted and never admitted any wrongdoing.
Tchen is fighting a subpoena that is an outgrowth of a civil case filed by retired former state of Illinois Appeals Court Sheila O’Brien, who has filed multiple legal bids related to the Smollett case and the handling of it by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
Why O’Brien is so actively interested in the case has not yet become clear. She jumped in the case in April, asking a judge to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Foxx.
Tchen’s involvement in the case on behalf of the Smollett family has thrown a national spotlight on her, the contact she had with Foxx and whether she crossed a line in her outreach on behalf of the Smollett family.
Tchen is the co-founder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund — helping women who have been harassed in the workplace — and was recently tapped to lead a review of the working conditions at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Tchen’s involvement in the Smollett case — and her resisting the subpoena — is the first major national controversy she has faced.
The brief filed to support Tchen’s motion to quash argues O’Brien has no business asking for any information because she “holds no position or authority within the Illinois justice system. Yet, she claims the power not only to institute this proceeding, but to compel Ms. Tchen to participate by appearing in court to testify and produce documents, and submitting to an ‘evidence deposition.’”
Moreover, the brief argues, O’Brien “has no legal right to make her demands of Ms. Tchen and, even if Petitioner did, those demands are inconsistent with the applicable rules of discovery and not supported by any showing of good cause.”
The subpoena demands Tchen produce “any and all documents, notes, phone records, texts, tape recordings made or received at any time, concerning your conversations with Kim Foxx in re Jussie Smollett.”
Benjamin B. Klubes, managing partner of Buckley LLP said in a statement, “We filed a motion today asking the court not to allow Sheila O’Brien to collect documents and take testimony from Tina Tchen in connection with Ms. O’Brien’s petition to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Jussie Smollett matter.
“We filed our motion because there is no basis for the appointment of a special prosecutor, and the court already has ruled that similar efforts to collect documents and take testimony from the State’s Attorney’s Office were improper.
“Ms. Tchen is cooperating fully with an inquiry by the Cook County Office of the Independent Inspector General, which is the government entity with an appropriate oversight role in the matter. We also explained in our motion that an initial attempt to serve the subpoena was unsuccessful because the process server made misrepresentations to building security and therefore was denied entry to our office suite.
“While Ms. O’Brien apparently circulated to the media an incorrect claim that Ms. Tchen had evaded service, we contacted her directly upon learning of the subpoena from the media and accepted service on behalf of Ms. Tchen the same day the process server came to our building.”
O’Brien has also issued a subpoena for Foxx top deputy Joseph Magats, a move that was quashed on procedural grounds by Cook County Circuit Court Judge Michael Toomin earlier this month.
This story is developing...
