On Thursday evening, a jury found former television actor Jussie Smollett guilty of fabricating a racially- and sexually-motivated hate crime against himself back in 2019, as reported by ABC News.
The jury in Chicago spent only 10 hours deliberating before coming to its verdict, finding Smollett guilty of five of the six counts before him. All five counts were related to filing a false police report and subsequently making false statements to police in the immediate aftermath of the alleged “attack.” The sixth count, of which he was found not guilty, were based on additional false comments he made about two weeks after the initial report.
In January of 2019, Smollett claimed that he was attacked by two White men wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats, who allegedly targeted him because of his race and his sexual preference, as a gay black man. Smollett alleged that they doused him with an unknown liquid that he believed to be gasoline, and was left with a noose wrapped around his neck; he also claimed that the two men shouted “This is MAGA country” as they attacked him on the Chicago street late at night.
However, it soon emerged that his alleged “attackers” were not two White men, but instead two brothers from Nigeria who had worked as extras on the television series “Empire,” which featured Smollett in his most well-known acting role. The brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, said that Smollett worked with them to stage the fake assault against himself in order to gain widespread sympathy and attention.
Special prosecutor Dan Webb called the verdict “a resounding message by the jury that Mr. Smollett did exactly what we said he did,” and also described the jury’s decision as a “complete vindication” of the Chicago Police Department, as multiple officers testified against Smollett during the trial.
Smollett’s attorney, Nenye Uche, said that he remained “confident on appeal [Smollett] will be cleared of all charges.” He described the verdict as “inconsistent” without elaborating, and added that “I don’t believe that justice was done today.”
When Smollett first made his allegations in 2019, he received widespread support from various celebrities, left-wing politicians, and others who immediately believed his story without questioning it. An investigation was launched into the alleged hate crime, but once Chicago authorities spoke to the Osundario brothers, they began discovering hints that it was a hoax, orchestrated by Smollett both for attention and because he was dissatisfied with his salary on “Empire.” The initial charges against Smollett were dropped by Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx, a George Soros-funded prosecutor, due to her biases in Smollett’s favor, which ultimately led to Webb’s appointment as a special prosecutor.
Smollett’s character was ultimately written out of the sixth and final season of “Empire” once it became evident that he had staged the assault. He could now face a sentence as high as three years in prison.