Jussie Smollett Continues to Cry Wolf

[ivn]

Disgraced actor Jussie Smollett sits down with Entertainment Tonight as part of his flailing redemption tour.

Jussie Smollett has a message to critics who say he doesn’t deserve a second chance in Hollywood. https://t.co/93X5vVnjyb
- Entertainment Tonight (@etnow) October 4, 2024

Comments

[skeetertuskin]

Is there a chance that he’s actually telling the truth? I haven’t followed the case closely, I vaguely remember two brothers who sold him drugs being involved who claimed he hired them. Could they have been lying in order to save their asses/cut a plea deal or is there a clear paper trail?

[acidosaur]

iirc there's a check stub signed by Smollet with an amount signed over to those brothers, which he said was for 'personal training'. but it doesn't make sense that he would then accuse them of racially aggravated assault to protect them...

[xtinkerbellax]

When it came out that he knew the guys, that was the time to come clean or at least pivot the story to minimize blowback best as possible and stick to the new narrative. The way he handled it made it so much worse than it probably needed to be.

[skeetertuskin]

but if he was buying drugs from them, which he sort of admits to in this interview, then it would align with why he would lie to protect himself (not them) and accuse them of hate crime/assault instead of coming clean about it being a drug deal gone wrong. I just don't believe those brothers and their version of events. it's a well known fact that the Chicago police department is corrupt and rampant with racism, homophobia and transphobia so it's not so far-fetched to think that prosecution offered the brothers a plea deal if they testified against Jussie and we all know how those plea deals are concocted.

[anterrabre]

I agree with you (especially about Chi town cops) but the milk in this case really wasn't clean, you know?

[drownsodapop]

He is telling the truth - he is still a shady person.
He was buying drugs from these guys, as well as frequenting bath houses with one of them while doing drugs.
He was clearly jumped and attacked by the same boys he bought and did drugs with, it was a hate crime that incriminated him too much. So he made up this whack ass story

[xtinkerbellax]

I would have bought it was a drug deal gone wrong and I think he could have easily come out of that ok career wise but the extenuating circumstances don't really align.

[skeetertuskin]

but it sort of makes sense that he would lie about the drugs in order to protect his career and claim it was a hate crime instead and that he didn't know the guys, which it might as well have been. it's not completely wild to think that those brothers retaliated in a homophobic way. perhaps he owed them a lot of money. idk. Chicago police department is corrupt and rampant with racism, homophobia and transphobia so it's not so far-fetched to think that prosecution offered the brothers a plea deal if they testified against Jussie who they were clearly trying to make a high-profile example out of. idk i'm just trying to give Jussie a benefit of the doubt because I just don't trust that the justice department has handled this 100% clean.

[totteringg]

You don’t have to believe that they handled it 100% clean to understood that he made it up. He pretty clearly was trying to stage it all as an attention thing.

[katheli]

but HE called the police, like why would he do that if it was a drug deal gone wrong. He'd have just bounced quietly. Getting the brothers arrested was in no way a positive outcome for him if he wanted to protect his career from drug rumours.

[skeetertuskin]

I'm not absolving him of any wrongdoing. He clearly wanted to use the assault to drum up publicity for his career and garner sympathy but I just don't believe he was this mastermind that orchestrated it.

[totteringg]

You don’t think the letter that was sent a couple weeks prior wasn’t also his doing? I think he was irritated that people didn’t care enough about the letter and decided that he had to go bigger with it.

[skeetertuskin]

This was investigated by the feds and they found no evidence that he wrote/sent that letter himself. He was very vocal about his dislike of the Trump administration so again, it’s not inconceivable that he got a death threat (my god Kathy Griffin still gets them daily by mail for her Trump stunt) given the circumstances. The fact is, we don’t know, so I don’t want to be connecting the dots based entirely on circumstantial evidence. He’s a black gay man still maintaining that he was a victim of a hate crime and I’m just trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. That’s all.

[totteringg]

I'm sure he gets death threats, but if you look at the actual letter, it seems comically fake. Usually, unwell people sending hateful letters like this are writing unhinged rambling paragraphs not using movie-style magazine letter cutouts. It reminds me of that obviously fake "blacks rule" graffiti that that white guy wrote on his driveway.

https://www.tmz.com/2019/02/07/jussie-smollett-attack-empire-security-fbi-changes-chicago/

[skeetertuskin]

again, I don't want to speculate but surely FBI would have found traces of his dna on the letter or something that would have tied him to it but they haven't so the only thing that the prosecutors have on him is the brothers' testimony which they made as a deal in exchange for all charges being dropped against them so...

[delfintaka]

Charges against Jussie were originally dismissed, and FBI had to get involved and investigate why (it was part of large corruption investigation into prosecutor's office.) So, no one was trying to make a high profile example of him. If anything, if not for this investigation, and the appointment of special prosecutor, Jussie would have gotten completely off.