The "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett claims he found himself the victim of a hate crime earlier this week, on one of the coldest nights in Chicago this year. Because, you know, "this is MAGA country" "rednecks" prowl the streets on bitterly cold nights looking for black actors to beat down. According to police, one little problem exists: It never happened. Jussie Smollett has lied to police and everyone else about the entire incident. The only question now: whether or not he will face charges when his story finishes unravelling.
Once more, Chicago Police Superintendent misleads the press. The Chicago Trib has the story (they're playing paywall games, so they don't get a link and the traffic).
Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said Friday detectives are "making gains" in their investigation of a report that "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett was attacked by two men who yelled slurs and put a noose around his neck in Streeterville early this week.
"We are making gains in the investigation and hopefully we’ll bring it to a successful resolution soon," Johnson told reporters at the Shakespeare District police station on the Northwest Side.
Making gains. Well, they're making gains alright:
Second City Cop reports last night that the attack NEVER HAPPENED.
Detectives say that Jussie Smollett had himself a GRINDR date "gone bad". GRINDR, for our readers, is the gay hook-up site on the internet, sort of like the gay version of Tinder.
Smollett of course, cops say, refuses all forms of cooperation – including allowing police to examine his phone.
His "ear witness" isn't cooperating. Of course the mainstream media is sure that the deep blue city of Chicago has some MAGA hat-wearing racists running around in the middle of the coldest night in decades just looking for an Empire actor to administer a hate-fueled beatdown upon.
Oh yes, those unidentifiable "persons of interest"? They were walking AWAY from the area of the attack between 15 and 30 minutes before it happened.
And maybe the best for last: "the anonymous witness who saw a "hillbilly looking" character that not a single camera in a one mile radius has a picture of."
If indeed this incident stands as yet another hate-crime hoax, Jussie Smollett might have succeeded in burning, not burnishing his reputation and career.
Time will tell.
But stuff like this makes critical minds suspect Smollett is nothing more than a small-minded bigot trying to gain fame and notariety. At least he didn't claim they pistol whipped him as well while wearing an NRA jacket.
This story sounded rather phony the first time I heard it. Figured it was just a matter of time. No sign of this in the major media at this point, at least no where I normally look.
So it was a publicity stunt
ever seen anybody 'visciously beaten up' by hateful rednecks with… no black eyes, no busted up lips or mouth, nose untouched, no luimps or bumps, no cauliflower ear…but a very tiny scratch.
thank god they beat his face/head with a beach ball or a feather..
[Deleted] hoax
~C'mon: We don't welcome that sort of perjorative in our house. -John
Really?!?!? Delete this crap! There’s no room for racism in the brotherhood of gun owners.
Thass not very inclusive! I'm triggered!
If you really feel this way, please don't post it on a family friendly forum, it is a hoax but racist terms are not appropriate on this site. Cornhead, please go to DummyUnderground (DU) with your rasist rants, you will get all kinds of feedback on both sides of the issue, although I'd bet they would be standing up for the fake actor.
Kenny-boy, so you are "triggered"? What does that mean, you are "Triggered" as in Roy Rodger's horse or you are "triggered" as in you have a pistol in your hand and ready to shoot Cornhead or shoot the wanna-be actor? Is "triggered" (replace the "t" with an "n") what you truly mean?, by the way, what do you mean by "game on" in referance to a different post about another article?
Actual evidence is important in crimes, Robert.
This racist post came from a liberal. They do this stuff on purpose to make it appear that all NRA members are racist.
That was my first thought when I saw the blatant racist remark, anti-gun Troll, stirring up manure on a pro-firearms web site, the reason I told him to go to DummyUnderground (DU) where he would fit right in, much worse than that the few times I visited there. After which I had to scrub my monitor with lysol.
Really? This whole fabricated fiasco appeared to be a hoax from the git-go. Chitcago a "hotbed" of Trump supporters?! HAHA! Trump supporters actually work for a living, have no "time" to be "roaming Chitcago streets" at 2:00am looking for some pissant "wanna-be-famous" dimwit presenting himself up for the true thugs that DO roam Chitcago streets looking for dimwit victims.
What a poor misguided fool, desperately seeking noteriety, enhance his "victimhood" in order to get national recognition maybe so someone will actually watch the tv show he is in? No thanks, not interrested.
And then there are the employed MAGA supporters like this one, Coast Guard lieutenant Christopher Paul Hasson, roaming the streets of Maryland, who is not hoaxster, and is bent on commiting a murderous rampage in the service of trump. So what triggered this wannabe terrorist…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6727041/Coast-Guard-lieutenant-arrested-arsenal-accused-plotting-massive-attack.html?fbclid=IwAR1aT697fYaIgtP6z5TnKT-ZxGz0WgxN-wwPdTbQrvmRBCf7FC854R1yA_s
LOL! The residents of Streeterville would never allow "hillbillies" to walk the streets of Streeterville. They'd hang 'em or have them "ANTIFA'd".
We demand justice. Hopefully, the police superintendent and media won't whitewash the whole thing. If Jussie doesn't furnish phone/phone records or the police superintendent doesn't get them (as he can), the whole thing will be viewed by most folks to be a farce. With accusations involving race, bigotry and MAGA it must be resolved and not be allowed to just fade away.
I was not that interested in this investigation but what I did read was that once he had arrived home, this guy keep the rope…the rope that was place around his neck while he was on the street… around his neck for about 40 minutes(?). This 40 minutes was after he had called the police to report the assault. Who in their lucid mind would do this? Incident all made up…
he should be arrested all the police hours all the man power for his made up bull-shit nobody knows who he is he thought this would put him in the spot light it did he is a gay man looking for gay sex that went bad
OKay, ten minutes of considering the confirmed facts leads inexorably to the conclusion that Smollet has made the whole thing up. This means that now none of the prominent news media, entertainers and politicians are going to comment on it anymore. No one is going to say, oops, we got scammed. They're all going to pretend that it never happened.
Meanwhile, Smollett had his fun. He was the object of much praise and affection, and he sold out his concert at the Troubadour. Notice how privileged he is. A wealthy, famous entertainer claimed to have been attacked, and the Chicago Police assigned ten investigators to the case, even though they must know that it's a phony. Evenutally the President of the United States had to acknowledge and condemn the imaginary attackers. If Smollet had been a poor black man, the police would have just laughed, told him he obviously hadn't been beaten, and warned him not to fool with the police again.
I will assume (and indeed I cannot) that Jussie Smollett has made up the whole thing. It is his fantasy and, in telling it and assuming that he would be believed, he has revealed that he is a rich man who is insulated from the physical and social realities of most people.
In his fantasy, Empire is such a popular show that dumb, violent bigots watch it and can immediately recognize Smollett and know that he is gay, even if they don't actually know his name. In his fantasy, racism and homophobia are so prevalent that racist, homophobic bigots dutifully patrol the streets of chicago at all hours and in all weathers, carrying ropes and bottles of bleach for immediate use should they run into anyone who is black and/or gay. In his fantasy, these bigots are so lazy that they can't muster up enough energy to beat up a victim once they have him down, and just run off, leaving the attack unfinished, and shout political slogans while they're running away. In his fantasy, he is so tough that he can scare his attackers away, and he has the super-healing powers of the Wolverine. His flesh will not bruise if he is punched in the face. His broken ribs will become cracked ribs that will become bruised ribs and, a few days later, he will be able to move and speak and sing as if nothing had happened.
By now it is looking suspiciously as if the Chicago Police have decided to protect him and refute any doubts that his story is true. This is because he is rich. I suspect that the police treat people differently because of their race, but I know for a fact that they treat people differently becasue of their social class. And Smollett's class is going to keep him immune from official censure.
Perfectly said. Can I share your words?
The original TMZ story on the imaginary assault is attributed to "sources close to Jussie," ao Jussie's publicist is the source for the original media report. This report claims that Smollett suffered a broken rib. So Smollett, in a bid to publicize a concert, made a claim of an injury that, had he really sustained it, would have made putting on the concert impossible. This man is not an analytical thinker.
Right now everyone,including his castmates on Empire, understands that this was a hoax. So now Smollett is going to have to go to work with a lot of people that he has scammed and forced into lying to protect him. He has cost the production company expenses for extra security. If they are not very patient people who dearly love him, he is in a lot of trouble.
And you just watch: Reputable media sources are now done with this story. They've been played and they know it. They're going to say no more forever about the whole thing.
What offends so many people about this hoax is that it's so obvious. Smollett seems to have never considered the possibility that the police would actually investigate is claims. He seems not to have anticipated that they would ask for his phone. He seems not to have done any research on the ubiqity of security cameras on the street. He claimed injuries, like the broken rib, that he had obviously not sustained. The whole slapdash, lazy soup of lies is an insult to anyone's intelligence, which is why Youtube is now salted with videos of people asking, what, do you think I'm that stupid that I would believe this?
Ahah! I've just read a report on the 'net that claims that Smollett had not intended to call the police. Unfortunately for him a "60 year-old friend." hearing the tale, called the police. So the orifinal plan was, just call TMZ and get a little press, but a very dim friend made a mess of things by involving the police. In fact, Smollett had not intention of going to the hospital, but had to to make it look good for the police investigators.
I think Smollett was going for a #metoo standard of proof, where he could say what he liked to a sympathetic news outlet, and anybody who doubted him could be tarred as indifferent to racism and homophobia. Unluckily, his very naive friend involved the police, and the whole scheme as blown up in his (undamaged) face.
A further interesting touch in the news reports: It is now claimed that he was punched "about" the face. Because it's pretty clear that no one punched him "in" the face.
Lying Fag from the start .
F him
Careful, son! They don't allow diversity of opinion here. Unless you embrace the rainbow flag, you may be "ban-hammered" as the chief circle-jerker around her call sit!
Hey Cornhead, changed your "name" to "olh urf", I see, first it is "afro-american" hateful slang, now it is "homosexual male" hate slang, you just can't get your hate corraled, can you? Why don't you just stay on DummyUnderground ({DU) where your comments are mild compared to the norm there? Please quit trolling here, your kind are not contributing to constructive exchange of ideas.
Now Jussie Smollett is trying to extricate himself form the mess. He has said puclicly that reports of his injuries "were exaggerated." Which they were, and he was the one who exaggerted them. Or made them up, more likely.
My theory: This whole thing was conceived as a verbal docudrama to get his name into the news, and raise awareness of the dangers of racism and homophobia, and slander the supporters of Donald Trump. Unfortunately it got out of hand when the police were drawn in, and the whole thing has now been exposed as a hoax. There is a near consensus among various posters (mostly Black Americans, incidentally) that it's all fiction. Now Jussie just wants to change the subject, and the polite, educated classes that supported his story when it was still reasonably plausible are going to refuse to discuss it any more.
Which is unjust. Making up a story about a hate crime for personal and poltical gain is itself a hate crime, and he should be held accountable.
When this was initially reported, it was obvious to me something about this story was OFF
This guy is POISONOUS. He's everything he described his "fantasy attackers" to be.
What a sick M F
CAREER OVER, GOOD RIDDENS, NEXT!
Now the F.B.I. is investigating the hate mail sent to Smollett. The first thing that comes to mind is, was anyone else in the cast of Empire sent hate mail? If not, what made Smollett so disagreeable to whoever sent him the mail that he was singled out? Or, more to the point, do gay, Black celebrities commonly receive racist, homophobic hate mail? And, if the answer is no, a suspicious person might infer that Smollett sent the hate mail to himself, in preparation for casting himself as a target of bigotry.
Of one thing I am sure: There will be no clues (like fingerprints, or an easily traced brand of paper) that will lead to positive identifaction of the sender. Why would you need the F.B.I., when no one can trace the letter? (Unless, of course, Smollett sent it to himself, and then was as careless in manuacturing it as he was in concocting the lies he told about the attack to the Chicago Police.)
If I was a betting man, I'm with Mr. Coleman. Jessie's Mullett might just end up with some criminal charges in most of Illinois' 102 other counties. In Cook County? With the SJW Kim Foxx running the place? He's teflon coated.
Chicago PD has invested thousands of man-hours investigating this. They know where the rope was purchased and are reviewing surveillance video. Heck, they may already have Jessie's Mullet already on tape buying the rope for his hoax. Unless he found a scrap piece laying in an alley or elsewhere on the lower street where he lived. Which given the homeless and dregs of society that live/hang out there, is a real possibility.
However, if the FBI boys track down that letter to him, I'm sure the DOJ will happily charge him. And that might put him into federal prison where Jessie's Mullet will have plenty of company.
I'm just thankful that he didn't claim that the people that allegedly accosted him were NRA members as well.
Maybe next time Jessie, right?
Here it is, February 9th. Google up "I believe Jussie Smollett's story," and you get nothing. Or at any rate, nothing that has been posted in the last five days. This means that nobody is now publicly defending him. Everybody knows that the story is false, even if they are not willing to publicly say so.
Now we have one of those embarrassing scandals that the liberal press is going to politely ignore, mainly because they got scammed and they can't stand to admit it. The press does this all the time. The most dramatic example was Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction. Within a few weeks after the fall of Iraq to U.S. (sorry, Coalition) forces, it was obvious that no weapons existed. It took the Washington Post a year to admit that there had been no weapons. A year. That's what the media are like when they've made a mistake. They just refuse to address the issue.
Smollett has expressed his "frustration and deep concern with certain inaccuracies and misrepresentations that have spread." Okay, I'll bite. Which inaccuraces and misrepresentations? Could you be al little more specific, Jussie?
Notice that he's gone silent. Notice that everybody in his family, and all his friends have gone silent. Silence is not the preferred protocol when people are falsely accusing you of wrongdoing. The right to remain silent is often invoked by the guilty, but never the innocent.
I love that bit about how his injuries "were exaggerated." Notice the use of the passive voice. Who did the exaggeration, and why? ( Um, I dunno. Somebody else. I have always been accurate in everything I've said.) It's as if John Dilinger had acknowledged that banks had been robbed, as if he wasn't quite sure who had robbed them.
Ian is my hero!
That's kind of you to say David. Of course, if your only other choice for hero today is Jussie Smollett, my Deplorable heroism is a small achievement. But thanks anyway.
So Jussie has been caught out, even if the media drop all mention of the scandal, and the police deline to prosecute. But the quesiton remains, how could he have been so stupid as to think he could get away with it? Well, he would have, if his very foolish friend hadn't involved the police. Cops hear people lie all day, and it is prohibitively difficult to fool them for long.
And I'' bet Smollett thought that you can't prove a negative. But you can if you've got near perfect videotape coverage of the time period that your didn't-happen even ostensibly happened.
Also, I'll bet that most show business figures have a fictional "private life." for public consumption. They have bad marriages and substance abuse problems and aging bodies just like everybody else, but they tell tales to the public that their lives are quite different. So Jussie's little fictional attack was really just another chapter in the novel he had been writing for his fans.
And I'll also bet that Jussie, like most middle class men, has not been in a fistfight since he was in Grade 6, and has no idea what happens to real people when they are struck by fists. He thinks the movie version of violence is like the real thing. How many movies have you seen where the hero gets punched in the face, and remains unmarked? Cops, who meet the victims of real violence all the time, know when someone has been beaten, and would have known immediately that Smollett had not been.
Well. The case is about to break open, because now a discarded bottle containing traces of bleach has been found on the sidewalk near where Smollett says he was attacked. Of course the question arises, how did the bottle get there when there is extensive video footage available of the area, covering the time when the attack is said to have happened, and there are no people in the videos? Was Smollett attacked by vampires, who don't show up in photographs. Well, it was after dark, and they didn't take his sandwich (vampires can digest only blood, remember). Hmm. So a vampire attack is a plausible theory.
Or maby it was a couple of invisible men. That's why they were wearing face coverings: to hide the invisibility of their naked faces. Then, after they attacked Smollett, they stripped and ran away, undetectable by video cameras.
Uh oh. February 15th and the police have just arrested two Nigerian brothers, who are black. And I'll bet they speak with accents that could not be mistaken for anything other than African. This means that they would have been identifiable as Africans by their speech, which is a detail curiously missing from Smollett's existing accounts of the attack. So, if he was less than honest about that detail, what else isn't on the level?
Let us suppose that these suspects conspired with Smollett to fake the attack. If they did,they are going to be very easy to turn, because they can be threatened with deportation. Jussie may be in a world of trouble right now.
In the inteview he gave on TV on the 14th, he put forth the opinion that the perpetrators would never be caught. That may have been his secret hope, because now they have been. I suspect that many eople don't understand how intelligent the police are. They think of them as blue collar guys incapable of sophisticated thinking, and that you can just lie to the cops and be believed. Young Jussie may be finding out htat that is not hte case.
In any case, I'm delighted to have been proved wrong in my assumption that Smollett would just get away with it, and that the police and the media would let the whole thing slide. Because, if Smollett is guilty (and it surely does look like it), he's in up to his neck.
I'm having fun here, watching as things unfold. Jussie Smollett is a professional entertainer, and he has now done something really, really entertaning. Yee haw, as we working class folks often say when we're enjoying ourselves. Yee haw.
This is not two brothers from Kentucky who supposedly did this but two of your brothers who you know. Hope the Chicago police trow the book at you and your cell mate is name Bubba.
This is getting beyond good, because Smollet is still continuing to protest his innocence of perpetrating a hoax, even as the police have forced his co-conspirators to confess. The more he digs in, the more contempt he reveals for the intelligence of just about everybody in the free world, the meaner the punishment that is going to land on him. I am delighted.
Right now (late February 16th), the biggest maybe in the bucket is, will he kill himself? Because the villagers are going to come looking for him with torches and pitchforks now.
Jussie Smollett has said that racist, homophobic attacks occur frequently and daily in the United States but, when he set out to become the victim of a racist, homophobic act, he had to hire people to pretend to be racist and homophobic. I have always said that, if there were no racists or homophobes, social justice warriors would hire and train them, because the prevalance of racism and homophobia and the need to fight it is essential to a certain kind of strident social and political liberalism.
Smollett was such a convincing, sincere-sounding liar on Good Morning America that it is possible that he is a psychopath. Any normal person who tried this lie and then got buried under an avalanche of evidence that he had lied would fold and confess. Not Smollett, who apparently is now bent on accusing the Osundairo brothers of perpetrating the attack for unknown reasons of their own, and then falsely accusing Smollett of fomenting the whole plan. That's just nuts in its unbelievability. That's twice as unbelievable as the original story, including the part about the broken ribs. Jussie Smollett may actually be crazy, since no sane man could still expect to be believed by anyone at this point.
Watch that Good Morning America inteveiw again, and imagine that you were hearing it as a Chicago Police investigator who had already arrested and questioned the Osundairo brothers. You would laugh yourself sideways while Jussie spoke about how badly he wanted his attackers caught, and how he bragged about he he had fought back, and how he had gone on about how puzzled and angry he was that some people doubted his story. Especially that part where he went on about how,if he's said that the attackers were black, he would have been more widely believed. Because his (fake) attackers actually were black.
What are Jussie's lawyers telling him now? Take the plea bargain. If this goes to trial he will be convicted and end up with a two-year jail term.
I hope he enjoyed all that love he got at his concert, because it's going to turn into something very different very soon.
So the answer to the question at the top of this page is yes. Good.
Notice that people in the mainstream media (who know very well that Smollett faked the whole thing) are carefully sitting on the fence. Trevor Noah is a particularly noxious example. Noah says that he is not ready to condemn Smollett as a liar, but that Smollett's story doesn't quite square with the facts. (Words to that effect. Not an exact quote.) What a weasel. People were saying with perfect conviction on Youtube on January 30th that Smollett was lying, because he so obviously was. Believing Smollett's story on the first day he told it took a certain fashionable gullibility that now looks a lot like stupidity.
What will Smollett's defense be? Will he try to blame the Osundairos? Will he claim some variety of PTSD from previous persecutions as a gay and Black American? I can hardly wait to hear.