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CHICAGO (AP) – Rumors about "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett began with reports that he would not have fully cooperated with the police after telling authorities that he had was assaulted in Chicago by two men who had thrown racist and anti-gay insults and handed him a rope. neck.
So the detectives in a city bristling with surveillance cameras could not find a video of the beating. Later, two brothers were arrested for interrogation and released after two days. Police said that they were no longer suspects.
After three weeks suspicion of suspicion, Smollett was charged Wednesday with making a false police report, a charge that can result in up to three years in prison and coerce the actor, who is black and gay, to pay the cost of the investigation on his account of a beating on January 29th.
In less than a month, the seemingly sympathetic victim of a hate crime, aged 36, has ceased to be accused of having fabricated all of this.
Police attempted on Wednesday evening to contact Smollett's lawyers to negotiate his surrender. The officers had no time to give the actor.
"We are trying to be diplomatic and reasonable, and we hope he will do the same," said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.
The charge of disorderly conduct was pronounced the same day as the detectives and the two brothers testified before a grand jury. Smollett's lawyers met with the prosecutors and the police, but it was not clear what they had discussed or if Smollett had attended the meeting.
In a statement, attorneys Todd Pugh and Victor Henderson said that Smollett "enjoys the presumption of innocence, especially when there has been an investigation like this where information, both true and false, have been disclosed ".
The announcement of the charges followed a wave of activity in recent days, including lengthy police interviews with the brothers, a search of their homes and their release after the police have released them.
The investigators did not say what the brothers had said to the detectives nor what evidence the detectives had collected. But it became increasingly clear that Smollett's story raised serious questions – what the police reported on Friday by announcing a "significant shift in the trajectory" of the investigation after the release of the brothers.
Smollett, who plays a gay character in the famous Fox TV show, said he was attacked on January 29 as he was walking home from a subway sandwich shop in downtown. He added that the masked men had beaten him, made derogatory comments and shouted "This is a MAGA country" – an apparent reference to President Donald Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again" – before to flee.
Earlier Wednesday, Fox Entertainment and 20th Century Fox Television issued a statement claiming that Smollett "remained an accomplished professional on the set" and that his character was not being removed from the series. The series is shot in Chicago and follows a black family as it navigates the highs and lows of the record industry.
The studio's statement followed reports that Smollett's role had been reduced during the police investigation.
After watching hundreds of hours of video, the detectives found and broadcast images of two people they said they wanted to interview. They then recovered the brothers at O'Hare Airport upon their return from Nigeria. The police interrogated the men and searched their apartment.
The two brothers, identified by their lawyer as Abimbola "Abel" and Olabinjo "Ola" Osundairo, were detained for nearly 48 hours on suspicion of assaulting Smollett.
The day after their release, police said the men had provided information that "changed the trajectory of the investigation" and that the detectives asked for another interview with Smollett.
Police said one of the men had appeared on "Empire" and Smollett's lawyers said one of the men was the actor's personal trainer, whom he hired to help him. physically prepare for a music video. The actor released his first album, "Sum of My Music," last year.
Smollett was indicted by the prosecutors and not by the grand jury. The police spokesman said the two brothers had appeared before the committee to "lock their testimony".
Sitting in front of the courthouse where the grand jury met, the two brothers' lawyer said the two men had testified for about two and a half hours.
"There was a point where this story had to be told, and they were monitored and they said we were going to fix that," said Gloria Schmidt.
She said that her clients did not care about compromises or immunities. "You do not need immunity when you have the truth," she said.
She also stated that her clients had received money from Smollett, but she did not provide details.
Smollett has been active in issues related to the LBGTQ, and early reports of the assault attracted outrage and support on social media, including Senator Kamala Harris from California and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres.
Referring to a published account of the attack, President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that "the situation does not worsen, as far as I'm concerned".
But several hours after Smollett was declared a suspect and the charges were announced, celebrity reactions online were few.
The former Cook County Attorney, Andrew Weisberg, said the judges rarely jailed the defendants for making false reports, instead choosing to put them on probation, especially if they were not in prison. had no criminal record.
Smollett has a criminal record relating to giving false information to the police when he is arrested while he was suspected of impaired driving. According to reports, he was also accused of false impersonation and driving without a license. Later he did not advocate for a fee reduction and followed a program of education and treatment of alcoholism.
Another potential problem is the bill that a person could receive after falsely reporting a crime that has resulted in an investigation of nearly a month, including the collection and examination of hundreds of hours of video surveillance.
Everyone will guess the size of the tab, but given the time the police have invested, the cost could be huge.
Weisberg recently portrayed a client accused of misrepresenting after the surveillance video discredited her story that three men had stolen her at O'Hare Airport.
For an investigation that took only one day, his client had to split $ 8,400 in restitution, Weisberg said. In Smollett's case, "I can imagine that it would easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars."
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Check out the full coverage of the Jussie Smollett case by the AP.
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