Jump to content
Head Coach Openings 2024 ×
  • Current Donation Goals

    • Raised $2,716 of $3,600 target

Jussie Smollett attack - real or staged?


swordfish

Recommended Posts

Admittedly I have paid very little attention to this case, but I heard this snippet on the radio this morning. The first 1:20 of the video is pretty compelling from the Chicago Chief of PD. 

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2019/03/26/cnngo-chicago-pd-mayor-rahm-emanuel-jussie-smollett-charges-dropped-reaction-sot.cnn

To quote Glen from Raising Arizona:

"This whole thing is just who knows who, then over here you got favoritism. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Jussie Smollett Disgrace: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/jussie-smollett-case-prosecutors-drop-charges/

Quote

Rarely do we find ourselves nodding vigorously in agreement with Rahm Emanuel or David Axelrod, but both onetime Obama lieutenants expressed needful levels of disbelief and disgust at the surprise outcome of L’Affaire Jussie Smollett. “Hate crimes are loathsome. Faking them is insidious and shouldn’t be excused,” Axelrod wrote on Twitter after the Cook County State’s Attorney dropped all charges against Smollett for faking the supposed January 29 attack on him by a raging pair of Trump supporters. “Despite Smollett’s denials,” Axelrod added, “nothing the prosecutor said in dismissing the case supports that. If prosecutors have evidence that contradicts the indictment THEY brought, they should share it today.” Emanuel, in perhaps his finest public performance ever, called the disposition of the case “a whitewash” and asked “Is there no decency in this man? A grand jury saw the evidence (and) realized this was a hoax — a hoax on the city, a hoax on hate crimes, a hoax on people of good values who actually were empathetic at first. And he used that empathy for only one reason . . . himself.” Axelrod deftly summarized the moral hazard in another tweet: “You can contrive a hate crime, make it a national news, get caught and-if you are a well-connected celebrity-get off for $10K and have your record expunged and files sealed.” Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said, “I think this city is still owed an apology” because “at the end of the day, it’s Mr. Smollett who committed this hoax.”

Prosecutors hastened to clarify that they were not dropping the case for lack of evidence, or because any exculpatory evidence had emerged to back up Smollett’s claims of innocence, but because they believed a brief term of community service and the forfeit of a $10,000 bond constituted condign punishment. Smollett, who had earlier pleaded not guilty, seized the opportunity to claim vindication and insisted he had told nothing but the truth all along, saying, “I would not be my mother’s son if I was capable of one drop of what I’ve been accused of.”

Perhaps further developments will shed light on what happened behind the scenes — Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx had already recused herself from the case for nebulous reasons — but what is already evident is that Smollett is the laughing beneficiary of a breathtaking miscarriage of justice. Chicago police detectives spent more than two weeks investigating Smollett’s claims, following the trail of evidence so diligently that they turned up video of Smollett’s acquaintances Ola and Abel Osundairo, who they believed staged the phony attack,  buying a red hat and two ski masks the day before the supposed ambush.

Smollett’s staging was obviously intended to disparage his avowed political enemy Donald Trump and Trump supporters, and he even said on Good Morning America that he believed his “attackers” were motivated by his public anti-Trump stance. Sharing his priors about the deplorables, far too many Americans who should have known better believed Smollett’s tall tale. A guilty plea from Smollett and robust punishment would have provided the closure America needed. Yet the colossal error in judgment by the Cook County prosecutors has foreclosed both opportunities. The rancor and ill-will connected with this sordid case will continue, and we will all be forced to breathe the toxic atmosphere. Meanwhile prospective hate-crime grifters will smile.

 

  • Disdain 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jussie Smollett's lawyer suggests Osundairo brothers wore white makeup during attack, brushes off FBI probe: https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/jussie-smolletts-attorney-not-at-all-concerned-over-possible-doj-fbi-investigation-nothing-improper-was-done

Quote

Jussie Smollett's attorney Tina Glandian offered an explanation as to why the "Empire" star said his alleged attackers were white while also dismissed President Trump's announcement that the FBI and the Justice Department will review the "outrageous" decision to drop charges in the actor's case.

Glandian told "Today's" Savannah Guthrie on Thursday that Smollett did not lie when he told police he believed his alleged attackers were white because they were possibly wearing white makeup to disguise themselves.

....

This just keeps getting more bizarre.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kim Foxx, the State's Attorney Who Let Jussie Smollett Go, Has a Lot of Explaining to Do: http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/28/kim-foxx-jussie-smollett-prosecutor

Quote

As an outraged public continues to wonder why Empire star Jussie Smollett is no longer facing charges for allegedly faking a hate crime, the National District Attorney's Association is criticizing prosecutor Kim Foxx for her decision to dismiss the case.

"When a prosecutor seeks to resolve a case through diversion or some other alternative to prosecution, it should be done so with an acknowledgment of culpability on the part of the defendant," the organization said in a statement. "A case with the consequential effects of Mr. Smollett's should not be resolved without a finding of guilt or innocence."

The group raises some very valid concerns about Foxx, the state's attorney. It was previously reported that Foxx recused herself from the Smollett case in February, but it appears she did not file the paperwork to do so officially. This meant that the judge could not appoint a special prosecutor to handle the case, and instead, Foxx's offices continued to be principally involved in bringing Smollett to justice. Her recusal was in no sense meaningful.

This matters, because Foxx had been in contact with supporters and relatives of Smollett—including Tina Tchen, a former aide to First Lady Michelle Obama. The relative and Foxx ostensibly discussed getting the Chicago police to turn the entire matter over to the FBI, which Foxx attempted in vain to make happen.

Tchen is not the only political friend Smollett and Foxx have in common: Sen. Kamala Harris (D­–Calif.), is another. Foxx has described Harris as mentor, and Harris appeared at a rally with Smollett and his sister, according to CBS Chicago.

There are obviously a lot of connections between politicians and Hollywood, and the existence of such connections does not prove that Foxx let Smollett off as some kind of favor. But Foxx herself has shot down one of the more plausible alternative explanations, which was that the case was simply not nearly as strong as the police had made it out to be. Foxx has maintained that the evidence was solid and that "this office believed that they could prove him guilty." For some reason, they simply did not want to.

Foxx's office has tried to spin the outcome as a win-win: Smollett forfeited a $10,000 bond and completed 16 hours of community service. But Smollett's attorneys have correctly pointed out that no formal agreement was ever reached, and Smollett was never required to admit guilt.

It would have been perfectly appropriate to show Smollett leniency. In general, we should not send people to prison unless they pose some actual danger to society. Community service and some sort of fine is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to this case—but only alongside an admission of guilt. Smollett inflamed the entire nation at a time when many people are especially concerned that hate crimes are increasing and President Trump has something to do with it. On its face, what happened to Smollett seemed to confirm this misleading premise. If the prosecutors believed Smollett was guilty, and that they could prove it, then they really should have compelled him to acknowledge that there are no ski-mask-wearing "MAGA country" mercenaries prowling the streets of Chicago in the middle of the night.

So it appears that as with much in life it's who you know as opposed to what you did.  If you are a mid-level celebrity in Chicago, at least.

 

  • Disdain 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/29/2019 at 8:39 AM, Muda69 said:

Kim Foxx, the State's Attorney Who Let Jussie Smollett Go, Has a Lot of Explaining to Do: http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/28/kim-foxx-jussie-smollett-prosecutor

So it appears that as with much in life it's who you know as opposed to what you did.  If you are a mid-level celebrity in Chicago, at least.

 

Or POTUS

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Virtuous Can Never Be Guilty: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/progressive-virtue-signaling-jussie-smollett-morris-dees/

Quote

Virtue-signaling is now the refuge of scoundrels.

Since ancient times, it has always been scary when moral auditors audit their own. Or as the Roman satirist Juvenal put it of male guardians entrusted to shield chaste girls from randy males, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (“Who will watch the watchmen?”)

When humans sense that there’s neither an earthly nor divine deterrent between them and social acceptance, power, riches, or their appetites, what follows is a foregone conclusion.

Such exemption is precisely the problem with modern American progressivism. It currently enjoys almost a captive mainstream media. It assumes the lockstep approval of the university. The movies that come out of Hollywood pound progressive themes. Most foundations fund race, class, and gender agendas. Popular culture has defined cool and hip as left-wing. In sum, all the secular dispensators of moral approval are hard left.

The result is that progressive actors and institutions understand that even their bad behavior will be contextualized rather than audited. Such medieval-style exemption gives them a natural blank check to overreach and to act unethically, crudely, and even unlawfully — as they might not have if they had expected ramifications.

After all, Johnny Depp, Peter Fonda, Robert de Niro, Madonna, Snoop Dogg, and other exhibitionists factored into their obscene presidential vituperation that the powers that matter to them — movie moguls, film critics, media hosts, neighbors in their tony zip codes, universities — would award their hate or at least nod at it. Far less vitriol aimed at President Obama would have earned social and career ostracism, whether one was an erstwhile birther like Donald Trump or a Missouri State Fair clown wearing an Obama mask. Had Mike Pence hugged, kissed, squeezed, and blown the hair of women and girls in the serial fashion of good old liberal Joe Biden, he would have likely been asked to step down from his vice presidency.

The career of liar, conspiracist, racist, and anti-Semite Al Sharpton took off after his Tawana Brawley hoax — soaring onto cable TV and into the hugs of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The likes of a Bill Maher, Alec Baldwin, Barbra Streisand, Joe Biden, and Harry Reid know they can say almost anything they wish, on the premise that their occasional racist, sexist, and hate-filled slurs were long ago indemnified by cheap progressive virtue-signaling.

Say what one wishes about President Trump, but his first two years were the most scrutinized, audited, and examined of any presidential tenure in memory. It was not so much that Donald Trump’s inner moral voice would never have approved of a Lois Lerner in the IRS, or of his intelligence services and FBI sandbagging a Democratic presidential campaign, or of his attorney general surveilling Associated Press and Fox journalists or flying on a government jet to the Belmont Stakes with his family.

The point was instead that Trump likely could not have gotten away with any of that in his first two years. And that fact was known to Trump — given media coverage that was more than 90 percent negative, a hostile administrative state, and a censorious culture.

The exact opposite geography characterized the governance of his predecessor — and it showed, from Benghazi to the 2016 systematic subterfuge of the Trump campaign and transition.

In the past three weeks, we’ve seen an epidemic of all sorts of progressive exemption.

The ‘Dossier’

....

Jussie

Would the right-wing doppelgänger of Jussie Smollett in 2019 Chicago even have tried to pull off a commensurate victimhood caper?

In a bizarro world, imagine a diminutive, white, straight, MAGA-hatted Trump supporter who was a minor actor in the reality show Ice Road Truckers who was by chance out walking in his MAGA-friendly, left-wing Chicago neighborhood on a frigid night at 2 a.m.

In such an alternative scenario, he would claim that by accident he suddenly encountered two large, gay, black, Farrakhan-hatted toughs, themselves out prowling in search of just such an obnoxious, white, straight, Trump-MAGA-hatted actor.

So of course, on their nocturnal hunting for white prey, the Farrakhan toughs came readily equipped with black shoe polish and a spare hoodie — to both hurt and humiliate our straight, white hero. They naturally attacked, in furious and instant recognition of the “hit” show’s actor, our twangy Alaskan semi-driver so popular in the black community — yelling something like “F*** you, honkey ‘Ice Road Trucker.’”

But they had no idea of the mettle of our heroic small, white ice-trucking actor, who bravely fought off the gay black racists. And he did so while recording his heroics on his cellphone and without disturbing his sandwich — though he struggled back, bruised, to his apartment with the humiliating hoodie still wrapped around his neck and a few drops of the shoe polish staining his coat.

Perhaps in 1960, in To Kill a Mockingbird fashion, such a white “victim” might well have gotten away with so surreal a con job, the same way that Smollett assumed he most surely would in 2019, given the left-wing ideological deterrence that shields lying, conning, and fabricating. So Smollett calculated that his wealthy-gay-black privilege would conquer all — and he was right, as he assumed all the indulgences that prior biases had earned in the past. The Kavanaugh hearings, the Covington kids, and the Smollett fraud offer us lessons: The fake victim not only gets off and will always get off, but he usually translates the concoction into profit and sympathetic victimhood.

....

The Steeles, Smolletts, and Dees of the world will continue to con their way to fame and riches while damaging the country — until it no longer pays. And it will no longer pay when we have the collective courage to accurately and matter-of-factly label Steele a pathological liar and fraud; and Smollett for what he is, a racist con artist; and Dees for what he has become, a virtue-signaling grifter; and our elite college system for what it has descended to, a non-meritocratic, cattle-branding operation that fast-tracks its chosen herd into green careerist pastures.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Citing Smollett, Cook County judge slams Kim Foxx's office on double standard: https://www.foxnews.com/us/smollett-cook-county-kim-foxx-double-standard

Quote

A Cook County judge recently called out embattled State Attorney Kim Foxx for upholding a double standard by prosecuting a woman for filing a false police report -- but dropping similar charges against embattled "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett.

Foxx has faced intense criticism over her office's decision to drop a 16-count indictment against Smollett, just weeks after bringing the charges against the high-profile TV star. Foxx's deal with Smollett, which did not require him to admit guilt, drew ire from the public, the city's top cop and the former mayor who called it a "whitewash of justice."

Cook County Judge Marc Martin, who was presiding over an unrelated case, chastised Foxx and her office for creating a situation where anyone charged with filing a false report would expect the same leniency her office afforded Smollett.

Candace Clark, 21, is facing one felony count of making a false report. Prosecutors accused her of giving a friend access to her bank account and then telling authorities the money had been stolen. She denies the charges and claims she's the victim of Foxx's double standard -- something the judge weighed in on.

“Well, Ms. Clark is not a movie star, she doesn’t have a high-price lawyer, although, her lawyer’s very good. And this smells, big time," Martin said to prosecutors during a recent hearing, Fox 32 reported. "I didn't create this mess, your office created this mess. And your explanation is unsatisfactory to this court. She's being treated differently."

The judge continued, “There’s no publicity on this case. She doesn’t have Mark Geragos as her lawyer or Ron Safer or Judge Brown. It’s not right. And (if) I proceed in this matter, you’re just digging yourselves further in a hole. (If the) press gets a hold of this, it’ll be in a newspaper. Why is Ms. Clark being treated differently than Mr. Smollett?

Foxx recused herself from the Smollett case in February but continued to oversee the investigation through text messages with her assistant Joseph Magats.

The text messages revealed Foxx called Smollett a "washed up celeb who lied to cops." They also show she cautioned Magats about throwing the book at Smollett.

“Sooo……I’m recused, but when people accuse us of overcharging cases…16 counts on a class 4 becomes exhibit A,” Foxx wrote to Magats on March 8.

“Pedophile with 4 victims 10 counts. Washed up celeb who lied to cops, 16. On a case eligible for deferred prosecution I think it’s indicative of something we should be looking at generally. Just because we can charge something doesn’t mean we should,” she added, referring to the case of R&B singer R. Kelly, who was indicted on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in connection with four women, three of whom were underage.

....

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 8 months later...

https://abc7chicago.com/jussie-smollett-indicted-again-in-connection-with-alleged-2019-attack-officials-/5921989/?fbclid=IwAR1oZlTAfwgXIlTob1rkqJ4u0g9ejMJADO7UZpO5U-8AkfD4Q9NjXWQ7OAQ

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The Cook County Clerk's Office confirmed Tuesday that special prosecutor Dan Webb has indicted former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett in connection with the alleged attack in Streeterville in January 2019.

Smollett had been charged with 16 counts of felony disorderly conduct for allegedly lying to police about the alleged attack, which police say Smollett staged on himself because he was unhappy with his "Empire" salary.


Police and prosecutors said Smollett orchestrated the attack with the help of two brothers. One brother was an extra on "Empire" and the other was Smollett's personal trainer.

All charges against Smollett were dropped in late February 2019 in exchange for community service and forfeiture of his $10,000 bond payment.

Webb was appointed as special prosecutor after the charges were dropped to review the Cook County State's Attorney's Office's decision.

This is a breaking news story. Check back with ABC7Chicago.com for updates.

 

And the saga begins / continues again.......

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 6 months later...

Review cites ‘operational failures’ in Smollett prosecution: https://apnews.com/36b9a12f5080d6f2d0fb494eff4994be

Quote

A special prosecutor in Chicago said Monday that Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and her office abused their discretion in the case against actor Jussie Smollett but did nothing criminal.

In a statement on the conclusions of his investigation, special prosecutor Dan Webb sharply criticized the handling of the Smollett case by Foxx and her assistant prosecutors, saying their handling was marked by disarray and misleading statements.

In March last year, Foxx’s office surprised and angered many in Chicago by dropping charges that accused the former “Empire” actor of staging a racist, homophobic attack against himself. Smollett is still adamant that the attack was real and wasn’t a publicity hoax. 

Webb’s statement said his investigation “did not develop evidence that would support any criminal charges against State’s Attorney Foxx or any individual working at (her office).” But it added, it “did develop evidence that establishes substantial abuses of discretion and operational failures” in how it handled the Smollett matter.

Webb’s findings announced Monday came after charges were restored against Smollett by the same special prosecutor in February. Webb said at the time that dropping the charges against Smollett were unjustified, including because the evidence against Smollett seemed overwhelming and because he was not required to admit that the attack was a hoax.

One of the focuses of Webb’s inquiry was about whether Foxx acted improperly by speaking to a Smollett relative and a onetime aide of former first lady Michelle Obama before the charges were dropped, or by weighing in on the case after recusing herself.

Foxx is the first black woman to hold Chicago’s top law enforcement job. She defeated her primary opponents earlier this year even as they made her handling of the Smollett case central to their campaigns. In overwhelmingly Democratic Chicago, the primary invariably determines who wins the general election.

Charging documents refiled by Webb in February accuse the black, openly gay actor of making a false police report in claiming two men attacked him early on Jan. 29, 2019, in downtown Chicago, shouting slurs and looping a rope around his neck.

Reform advocates have hailed reforms Foxx pushed through — often over the angry objections of Chicago’s police union and chiefs of police across Cook County, including treating certain nonviolent crimes, such as shoplifting, as lower priorities.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...