Monday, February 24, 2020

Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax case set to return to Chicago courtroom


Actor due to make first court appearance after being re-charged by Special Prosecutor in alleged faked 2019 attack.


By Andy Grimm@agrimm34 Feb 23, 2020, 8:56pm CST

Actor Jussie Smollett walks out of the Leighton Criminal Courthouse after prosecutors dropped all charges against him in March 2019. Smollett is due back in court Monday after being recharged by Special Prosecutor Dan Webb.Sun-Times Media

A year after all charges against him in an allegedly faked hate crime attack were dropped, Jussie Smollett — and the eyes of a divided nation — will return to a Chicago courthouse Monday.

The former “Empire” actor will be facing a prosecution team led by former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb and a new, six-count indictment charging him with falsely reporting he was the victim of a racist, homophobic attack near his Streeterville apartment on a frigid night in January 2019.

Claiming to have been bruised and battered in the attack, Smollett’s image was all but destroyed in the months that followed making his report to police officers, as a police investigation determined that Smollett hired two acquaintances to stage the assault. Smollett was booked into the Cook County Jail almost exactly a year from Monday, posting his $100,000 bond that afternoon.

A month later, all charges against Smollett were dropped in a controversial move by prosecutors that became subject of national debate — and, eventually, an independent investigation by Webb. Smollett was written out of his role on “Empire,” and State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s bid for a second term as Cook County’s top prosecutor became more about her handling of Smollett’s case than about the reform platform she has sought to enact.

With the primary next month, Foxx faces a field of four challengers for the Democratic nomination, and two Republicans also are running to face her in the general election.

Smollett also faces a lawsuit in federal court, where the city of Chicago is seeking to recover the $130,000 spent investigating the case. His Los Angeles- and New York-based attorneys, Mark Geragos and Tina Glandian, face a defamation suit filed by the two men who claim to have been hired by Smollett to fake the attack.


After a retired judge petitioned the courts to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate both Smollett’s claims of having been attacked and how prosecutors handled his case, Judge Michael Toomin appointed Webb to lead the probe in August. After a six-month investigation, Webb two weeks ago announced charges against Smollett and said an investigation into the decision to drop the 2019 indictment still was ongoing.

Smollett again faces felony charges of disorderly conduct for making false statements about the attack to police and detectives, counts that rank among the lowest-level felony charges in Illinois law. Smollett on Monday is all but certain to receive bond and remain free as he awaits trial.

Coming to the courthouse, and possibly walking out of the adjacent Cook County Jail, Smollett can expect to face a phalanx of cameras from media outlets from around the city and the globe.

The actor and his attorneys have steadfastly maintained his innocence, blaming the charges on a police investigation that quickly focused on the actor and overlooked witnesses who saw at least one other man leaving the area of the attack around the time Smollett said he struggled with two white men who hit him, looped a thin rope noose around his neck and poured bleach on him after taunting him with racist, homophobic remarks.

Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo, musclebound brothers who had worked as extras on “Empire” and had served as personal trainers for Smollett, claim that Smollett planned the attack and paid them $3,500 to carry it out. Smollett claims that if the attack was a hoax, it was one that he had no involvement in plotting, and that the $3,500 check made out to Abimbola around the time of the attack was for his services as a trainer, and that a string of cryptic emails between the two men was related to illegal drug purchases.

3 comments:

  1. If the only thing that comes out of this is the end of Kim Double X's career, I'll be okay with that. Smullett's career is already toast,so that's another win

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous2/24/2020

      You wish his career was toast, but in this day and age, they'll take this guy, put him off to the side for a couple months, launch the story that the police framed him and a publicist will re-launch him as a hero and again our police officers will be cast as Nazis. This is the world we live in. And the media will go along with him.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous2/25/2020

    Chicago provides quality shit shows.....

    ReplyDelete