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Was the Jussie Smollett Story a Hoax?
Several weeks ago, during the coldest snap Chicago has ever experienced, detectives were busy trying to solve what would have been the crime of the year: an actor on the television show Empire was attacked with bleach and a noose, out in freezing cold temperatures in the dead of the night. His attackers reportedly were screaming about his race (he’s black) and his sexual orientation (he’s gay) while declaring Chicago (yes, Chicago) to be “MAGA country.”
Immediately, the attack was decried by politicians, fellow actors, etc. A few examples:
On account of potential deletions, here are a few screenshots of tweets from politicians: pic.twitter.com/7WASdxN19w
— Alex Macias (@AspConservative) February 15, 2019
— Alex Macias (@AspConservative) February 15, 2019
— Alex Macias (@AspConservative) February 15, 2019
The account above has dozens more screenshots along the same lines (click the thread and you can scan more).
The story, as implausible as it sounded to most thinking Americans, started falling apart. Smollett was reluctant to hand over his phone records, and despite being a city covered with cameras, there wasn’t a single one in the area that caught the attack. Some of the strangest elements were the fact that Smollett kept the noose around his neck half an hour after the attack, and that he managed to keep holding onto his Subway sandwich, purchased before his attack but present when police questioned him later.
Tonight a local reporter with ABC reported,
BREAKING: Multiple soucres tell @ABC7Chicago Eyewitness News Jussie Smollet and the 2 men who are being questioned by police staged the attack – allegedly because his character was being written out of the show Empire.
— Rob Elgas (@RobElgasABC7) February 15, 2019
The police department are disputing the reporting,
NEW: Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson called @ABC7Chicago tonight to say Jussie Smollett is considered a victim and the police investigation is on-going.
— Rob Elgas (@RobElgasABC7) February 15, 2019
It sounds like folks within the police department may have leaked a theory too soon. Time will tell.
But if Smollett did indeed concoct this story out of whole cloth, he should face the same consequences as his would-have-been perpetrator. Fabricating hate crimes should carry the same penalty as committing them; because now other victims of actual crimes have an even more uphill battle to being believed. And if the story is indeed fabricated, it’s clear Smollett did something particularly damaging: he decided to create a story that wouldn’t just make it harder for victims of hate crimes to be believed, but would also increase tensions in a country and in a city that cannot withstand more fuel on our societal bonfire of anger and resentment. That’s a crime against most Americans, and it’s one that nobody should take lightly.
Published in Culture
It sounds peculiar, and there are certainly enough examples of faux hate crimes being staged by ersatz victims. But I’ll wait until authorities announce a conclusion before thinking much about this.
Bethany,
I am more than willing to wait for the wheels of Justice to grind this out fully. However, I don’t see any harm at this point in expressing a purely speculative point of view as long as I am warning you in advance. Aside from the lack of hard corroboration that should have already been available there is something else that has been bothering me. When Smollett speaks of the event he is never talking about the physical details. Usually, when someone is challenged on their version of an event they respond by providing very specific details and insisting on them. If you listen closely, Smollett seems to be more interested in critiquing anyone who challenges his story than providing a convincing account. This sounds like an SJW who has manufactured this whole event while justifying to himself his deception on the basis of all of the “hate” that is out there anyway.
If this is true, we’ve got a much simpler, shortest distance between two points explanation. Stay tuned don’t touch that dial.
Regards,
Jim
It was a hoax from the start. Or so I thought at the time and still believe. Nothing ever added up in Jussie’s story. However He and his agent got all the publicity they wanted. And since Jussie is a young gay black man the MSM ate it up.
It checked all the right boxes for the media. Kind of like the Covington kids, Duke Lacrosse case and Kavanaugh. The media picks winners and losers and will not punish or cover any abuse against law enforcement or white men.
I just have one question. How did these MAGA thugs know he’s gay? He had just come from a SUBWAY sandwich shop, not a gay bar — in subzero weather with everyone bundled up and unrecognizable (one assumes). That’s some gaydar!
Color me skeptical.
I wondered about this too. And how they knew who he is. Presumably they wouldn’t watch his show, and he isn’t well known otherwise.
His ambition is to earn a living in performance art. If it is true his character was being written out of the show Empire, then at least give Hollywood credit for that.
MAGA Thug is an oxymoron. Just try to find one.
Yeah, I should have said, “supposed MAGA thugs.”
So when dudes start beating you up you notice their headwear? This has been fishy from the start. Furthermore, where is is the report from the Doctor examining his bruises? After being beatin’ up doesn’t a police Doctor give you a once over and write a report? I really don’t know, I’m just asking.
I had no idea who he is or why there’s even a story. Everyone knew it was going to be below freezing there. Why would anyone be outside when they didn’t need to be?
Presumably it was because of how smartly he coordinated his hat, gloves, and scarf with his coat.
I’m curious. Has anyone actually ever used or even heard the phrase “MAGA country” used before this? I know I haven’t.
More importantly, if this guy did file a false police report that he knew was false, he has to suffer some legal problems. Policemen and women have spent many hours that the state government paid with taxpayer money to investigate this man’s claim. If this man’s claim is false and he knew it was false from the beginning he has distracted police from actual crimes and he should pay a price for it.
Perhaps, but let’s not underestimate the social benefit from starting a conversation about some very real, and troubling issues in society today. I mean, at least we’re talking about rope violence.
Good Summary Here
The story I am hearing is the two “thugs” worked for Empire. One was an extra. (Apparently the police were able to track them down through the surveillance video and a check of Chicago cabbies in the area.) Knowing Jussie and all, they would know he was gay and be able to utter the appropriate threats and insults.
Oh, and this: Jussie was being written out of Empire next season. I am not saying that these two coordinated anything with Jussie. For all I know the Empire set is rife with homophobic Trump supporters and this was a legitimate attack and not a pathetic attempt to keep Jussie employed after the end of this season.
The bizarre coverage regarding Smollett’s phone highlights that neither the main stream media nor the police are really interested in this. They focus only on Smollett providing redacted call logs.
Three things I would be interested in are his geolocation data, any pairing data from the phone, and data from apps.
For example wrt pairing, if he had an iPhone and one of the perps also had an iPhone, did the two phones automatically communicate with each other?
From Variety:
On Jan. 30, police released surveillance images of two figures who were in the area at the time of the alleged attack, and described them as “persons of interest” in the case. In an interview on “Good Morning America” on Thursday, Smollett said he was convinced that the two were the attackers.
Is he blind?
The times when I have wandered around Streeterville at 2:00 AM with a bottle, it didn’t contain bleach. Tequila possibly, bourbon preferably, but not bleach.
Based on observation of media-reported “hate crimes” over the past several years, here’s a good rule of thumb for judging whether a reported hate crime is real or not.
If the victim winds up injured severely enough to be hospitalized* or dead, it’s probably real.
If not, it’s almost certainly fake.
*Hospitalized = admitted, not just checked over in the ER.
Everything about his story reeked from day one. He used up a huge amount of police resources for his BS story, with a team of detectives spending weeks on investigating it. In a city that has a murder clearance rate of around 17%. He should be charged to the full extent of the law, and made to pay for the resources his lies consumed.
My working theory was Grindr date gone bad.
I was giving him credence for the ‘attack’, but not the motivation for it.
This theory – (staged to protect his job) is even worse.
Jail time is called for.
Its time to start bringing these hoaxers up on hate crime charges. This is an obvious racist black man who wanted to incite hatred against white people and conservatives among the black community. It should be treated with greater significance than normal charges for filing a false police report.
On the good side. Once again, this proves what a wonderful place we live in. The people who claim victimhood the loudest are so foreign to anything resembling being victimized that they constantly go to extreme measures to fabricate their victim status.
I think he’s a famous guy who’s publicly out as gay. That’s one part of the story that does add up. If it had been Ellen, or Neil Patrick Harris, you wouldn’t be asking “how did they know they were gay?” Everybody knows they’re gay. I don’t think this guy is quite so well known, but I get the sense that a lot of people know who he is and that he is gay.
What I heard from the initial reports sounded more like string violence. Maybe twine?
That’s true, if the alleged crime had happened in Miami and not Chicago at 2:00 am — on a record-breaking cold winter night in Chicago when people were wearing goggles to keep their eyeballs from freezing.
How did they recognize him?? Was he the only person in Chicago that night with his face exposed?? My skepticism isn’t because he’s gay. It’s because his story doesn’t add up. “This is MAGA country” in Chicago sounds like the punchline to a joke.
Sea,
Right. This is a scenario that is so generous to Smollett as to be classified as a hallucinogen. The bookies have “homophobic Trump supporters” at 15 to 1 against. The bookies have “pathetic attempt to keep Jussie employed” at 1 to 5 with updates hourly.
Regards,
Jim
Well I tink it was dem kids from Kentucky up to no good don-cha-kno.
Unnamed sources = Not real news (yet).
Sounds like the police are getting to the bottom of this, but from what I have seen so far it does kind of remind me of Morton Downey Jr. getting attacked by Nazis who painted a swastika on his face . . . backwards, as if he did it himself in a mirror.