"Empire" actor Jussie Smollett has been indicted by a grand
jury in Chicago on 16 felony counts after allegedly lying to police
about being the victim of a racist and homophobic hate crime, NBC News
confirmed Friday.
Smollett was charged last month
with felony disorderly conduct for the alleged false report he made
with Chicago police on Jan. 29, according to the Cook County State's
Attorney's Office. In it he claimed he was assaulted by two masked men
who hurled racist and homophobic slurs.
Smollett
was charged by a grand jury of 16 felony counts of disorderly conduct
for making a false report, according to a criminal complaint.
Smollett and his attorneys have previously denied the allegations against him.
In
a statement released after Smollett was charged, his attorneys said he
"enjoys the presumption of innocence, particularly when there has been
an investigation like this one where information, both true and false,
has been repeatedly leaked."
The actor, 36, who is black
and gay, also said his attackers poured what he believed was bleach over
him and put a noose around his neck. Authorities then began to investigate the case a potential hate crime.
Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told NBC News
at the time of his arrest in late February that the investigation into
the alleged attack demanded "considerable" police resources. He said
that at one point the department had 12 detectives scouring surveillance
videos.
Some social media users began to cast doubt on Smollett's
claims after police said they were not able to find footage of the
alleged attack after going through a voluminous amount of recordings
from the many surveillance cameras in the area.
Police
also had said Smollett refused to turn over his phone and phone records
for the investigation. The actor had told police he was on the phone
with his manager at the time of the attack.
Police have said, however, that Smollett was cooperating with the investigation, and later gave investigators a PDF file with partial phone records.
Guglielmi said on Feb. 16 that the investigation shifted after questioning two brothers, Ola and Abel Osundairo, who were potential persons of interest in the case.
Just days later, Smollett was charged with felony disorderly conduct for the alleged false report.
Chicago
Police Superintendent Eddie T. Johnson said after Smollett’s arrest
that the actor “took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to
promote his career.”
Johnson claimed that Smollett was
unhappy with his salary on Fox’s “Empire” and Smollett sent himself a
letter containing racist language, and when that did not work, he paid
$3,500 to orchestrate the attack.
The top prosecutor in the Chicago area, Cook County State’s Attorney
Kimberly Foxx, recused herself from the case in February because she had
had "conversations with a family member of Jussie Smollett about the
incident and their concerns, and facilitated a connection to the Chicago
Police Department," a spokesperson for the office said.
1 comment:
Good. What a stupid idiot and he pays by check yet. Did you read that last paragraph? That person who called the top prosecutor could have been Kamilla Harris. Jussie and Harris have been photographed at numerous rallies right next to each other and I read that she's Jussie's mother's sister.
Post a Comment