(Article by Tom Elliott republished from News.Grabien.com)
To quickly recap: Smollett, an openly gay actor and musician who stars in the Fox show, “Empire,” recently claimed he was the victim of a horrific hate crime perpetuated by Trump-supporting thugs. Besides acting, Smollett is well known for being an outspoken critic of President Trump.
According to the account relayed to the celebrity gossip site, TMZ, Smollett was attacked upon leaving a Chicago Subway sandwich shop around 2 AM. The masked attackers, he says, recognized him, hurled racial and homophobic epithets at him (”Empire f*gg*t n*gger!”), beat him up, tied a noose around his neck, poured bleach on him, and said triumphantly, “This is MAGA Country!”
The original report said his rib was broken in the attack and he was recovering in a hospital. Smollett also told police that in the days before the attack, he received a death threat in the mail. That letter was signed “MAGA,” the same thing he says his attackers yelled. The letter itself used letters from magazines to conceal the sender’s handwriting:
News of the attack immediately went viral, and celebrities worldwide used the incident to denounce what they described as growing intolerance of minorities.
But as people clamored for more information, Smollett started clamming up. The Chicago Police Department opened an investigation, with an assist from the FBI, only to find the actor extremely uncooperative. What evidence they did turn up only served to undermine Smollett’s story.
During a performance at Chicago’s Troubadour Theater days after the attack, Smollett read a prepared statement acknowledging parts of his original story were untrue. Smollett admitted his ribs were not actually broken and that he never went to the hospital.
“A couple of points I wanted to make really quick; just because — four points,” he said before performing an encore. “I was bruised but my ribs were not cracked, they were not broken. I went to the doctor immediately, my friend Gatson [sp?] drove me. I was not hospitalized. Both my doctors in LA and Chicago cleared me to perform but said to take care obviously. But above all, I fought the f*ck back.”
Investigators also failed to locate any evidence corroborating Smollett’s claims. Security footage reviewed by the Chicago Police Department show a gap where the actor was walking, disappeared from camera, and returned one minute later with a noose around his neck. For an attack as brutal as Smollett described, this is a very small time window for so much to have occurred.
The Chicago Police Department say security footage show the actor returning to his apartment still clutching the Subway sandwich he had bought before the incident, which many found surprising since he had just apparently undergone a horrific ordeal in which he “fought the f*ck back” against racist thugs. That his attackers happened to randomly run into him at 2 AM while carrying the perfect accessories for an anti-black hate crime — bleach and a noose — also struck many as odd, especially as a cold spell meant Chicago temperatures were well below zero that night.
Read more at: News.Grabien.com
Please contact us for more information.
