Cook County prosecutors told police to lay off their investigation of Jussie Smollett weeks before his charges for reporting a fake hate crime were dropped.
Assistant State Attorney Risa Lanier had already decided in late February to drop the charges against Smollett because he made good for his actions by paying “Chicago $10,000 in restitution and doing community service,” according to police documents released Thursday.
Actor Jussie Smollett leaves the Leighton Courthouse after his court appearance on March 26, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty Images)
It took another month for state prosecutors to announce the scheme to an incredulous public.
Smollett had generated national media attention by claiming to be the victim of a hate crime in which he claimed he was taunted with racist epithets and anti-homosexual language, had a noose tied around his neck and was threatened with an unknown liquid. The actor also reportedly initially claimed that his tormentors told him he was in “MAGA country.”
After a police investigation, however, the attack looked less like a hate crime and more like and more like a guise for Smollett to gain recognition and sympathy from others.
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson alleged that Smollett had engineered the stunt himself by paying two brothers — Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo — $3,500 to play his attackers. Police documents have alleged that one of the brothers dealt drugs to Smollett that included marijuana, ecstasy and cocaine. (RELATED: Chicago Mayor Says Charges Against Smollett Were Dropped ‘Because He’s An Actor’)
Protestors organized by the Fraternal Order of Police call for the removal of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx on April 01, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The police documents reveal that officers initially asked Smollett if the Osundairo brothers could have been his attackers, but the “Empire” performer said he didn’t think so because they were “black as sin” and he insisted the guilty pair had to be white.Smollett said he had “a good relationship” with the duo: “They are straight, so we don’t have any problems with women or men. They don’t owe me any money; I don’t owe them any money.” (RELATED: Outraged Fraternal Order Of Police Demands Investigation Into Smollett Case)
The documents show that despite all the goodwill, the pair confessed to their role in the apparent hate crime hoax.
In April, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx defended the decision to be so lenient with Smollett and suggested she was being criticized because she was black. But Foxx had earlier described Smollett as a “wash-up celeb who lied to cops.”