Smollett Convicted of Lying About 2019 Hate Crime

A Chicago jury has found actor Jussie Smollett guilty of reporting to the police that he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic assault in 2019, choosing to believe the accounts of Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo, two brothers who testified that Smollett had asked them to mildly injure him as part of a publicity stunt, reports the New York Times. Smollett was convicted on five counts of felony disorderly conduct relating to conversations he had with the police just after the attack. He was acquitted on the sixth count, which related to a follow-up conversation with an investigator two weeks later.

 On Jan. 29, 2019, Smollett told the police he had been the victim of a hate crime near his apartment building in Chicago and that one of his attackers had even yelled, “This is MAGA country,” but investigators came to the conclusion three weeks later that he had staged the attack on himself. Special prosecutor Daniel K. Webb told the jury that Smollett staged the attack because he had received a death threat in the mail and was upset by the muted response of the producers behind “Empire,” the television show on which he starred. The defense argued that he had not been upset by the TV studio’s response to the letter, and had, in fact, turned down its offer to have security drive Smollett to and from the set. They said the Osundairo brothers were liars who had attacked Smollett to scare him into hiring them as bodyguards, and who concocted a story to avoid prosecution themselves. Smollett faces up to three years in prison.