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Jussie Smollett, the homosexual actor who claimed early last year that two white supporters of President Trump attacked him, was indicted again yesterday for the hate hoax, which sent the nation into the usual moral panic, along with a Two Minutes Hate directed at the president.
A special grand jury hit Smollett with a half-dozen counts of disorderly conduct.
Special Prosecutor: Four False Reports
The 37-year-old actor, the Chicago Tribune reported, will be arraigned on the new charges on February 24.
Smollett filed “four separate false reports to Chicago Police Department officers related to his false claims that he was the victim of a hate crime, knowing that he was not the victim of a crime,” Special Prosecutor Dan Webb said in a prepared statement.
Jussie Smollett planned and participated in a staged hate crime attack, and thereafter made numerous false statements to Chicago Police Department officers on multiple occasions, reporting a heinous hate crime that he, in fact, knew had not occurred….
Several factors went into this determination, including the extensive nature of Mr. Smollett’s false police reports, and the resources expended by the Chicago Police Department to investigate these false reports.
A judge appointed Webb after Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx blew the case, which Webb also discussed in his statement.
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Foxx’s office “issued a written press release in which it told the public that the Smollett case was being resolved under the same criteria that would be available for any defendant with similar circumstances,” but when Webb’s office asked Foxx’s office to prove that claim, it was “unable to provide this documentary evidence.”
Webb’s investigators “obtained evidence showing that at the time of the approval of that indictment,” the statement says, Foxx’s office “had concluded that the evidence against Mr. Smollett was strong.” But prosecutors dropped the case.
The Indictments
The six-count indictment in dry legalese doesn’t quite do justice to Smollett’s elaborate hoax.
Indeed, the former Empire actor’s lies didn’t begin with the attack itself.
He supposedly received a hate letter from Trump supporters with the threatening return address MAGA — Make America Great Again. Inside an envelope containing a white powder found to be acetaminophen, the generic name for Tylenol, was a terrifying threat in cut-out, ransom-note letters: “You will die black f*g.”
Smollett apparently thought the note would fortify his fairy tale.
A week later on January 29, Smollett claimed two whites attacked him as he returned from a 2 a.m. run to Subway.
“This is MAGA country,” they snarled. “Aren’t you that Empire faggot, n****r!?” They beat him, doused him with bleach, and wrapped a noose around his neck.
When the story surfaced, Trump’s America stood in the dock. Actors and politicians across the country denounced not just hate, but the hate that one man had turned loose by winning the 2016 election.
Smollett fooled the usual fools, but gumshoes in the City of Big Shoulders were skeptical. It didn’t add up. No one asked whether it was likely that two white dudes were hunting for Smollett or any other black person in downtown Chicago in the wee hours of a frigid January morning, or whether MAGA men are likely to be Empire fans, or even know who the light-loafered actor is.
The toddlin’ town’s gendarmes went to work. They collected video from dozens of surveillance cameras, then bagged two Nigerian bodybuilders who produced a $3,500 check from Smollett to pay for the beat down. And that was that.
Police speculated that Smollett was trying to get a raise, but in any event prosecutors dropped 16 felony charges, supposedly in exchange for Smollett doing community service and surrendering the $10,000 he posted for bond.
Problem was, the cops spent $130,000 investigating Smollett’s yarn.
Lied to Cops Before
Smollett has lied to cops before.
In 2007, NBC News reported when the MAGA hate hoax blew up in Smollett’s face, the actor was charged “providing false information to law enforcement” when cops in Los Angeles collared him for drunk driving.
The latest lie did come with a price. Hours before he staged the hate hoax in Chicago, he tried out for a lead role in Take Me Out, a play about a biracial homosexual baseball player.
He didn’t make the lineup.
Photo: AP Images
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
