Here's how Page Six is covering it:
Jussie Smollett was indicted on Tuesday in Chicago, according to a new report.
The indictment, brought by special prosecutor Dan Webb, stems from the alleged January 2019 hoax attack against the former “Empire” star, Fox32 reported, citing sources.
Smollett has been accused of hiring two brothers to stage an attack on himself that included tales of a noose and bigots screaming racist, homophobic slurs.
Cops in Chicago, where Smollett lives and alleged the attack occurred, have said the actor made up the whole thing. He’s denied the allegations.
He is due in court Feb. 24, Fox32 said.
In an article just posted, the Sun-Times hedges a bit:
Attorneys for Jussie Smollett have been told that they should expect their client to be indicted Tuesday, a source familiar with the matter said.
Investigators in the case have gone to California to interview people connected to Smollett, the source said.
The indictment comes just under a year after Smollet was charged in 2019 for allegedly staging a hoax hate crime attack near his Streeterville home.
Special Prosecutor Dan Webb, a former U.S. Attorney in Chicago, was appointed by Judge Michael Toomin six months ago and charged with reviewing both the evidence against Smollett for with the possibility of filing new charges, and investigating how the case was handled by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and her subordinates.
Toomin declined to answer any questions earlier Tuesday about a possible indictment.
Smollett in February 2019 was charged with multiple, low-level felony counts for allegedly providing false information about the attack, claiming that he was jumped by two white men who called out racist, homophobic slurs as they punched the actor and draped a noose over his head.
Detectives determined that Smollett had paid two acquaintances, who had previously served as extras on “Empire” and as Smollett’s personal trainers, to attack him.
Foxx had recused herself from the case the day before those charges were announced, delegating decision-making in the case to her top deputy, Joseph Magats. Just over a month after Smollett turned himself in to police, the State’s Attorney’s Office dropped all charges against Smollett.
The Chicago Tribune has more details:
Smollett was indicted by a special Cook County grand jury on six counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly making four separate false reports regarding what police said was a faked attack. Special Prosecutor Dan Webb announced the charges in a press release Tuesday, saying that “further prosecution of Jussie Smollett is ‘in the interest of justice’."
... In announcing his decision to charge Smollett, Webb pointed to several factors including “the extensive nature of Mr. Smollett’s false police reports, and the resources expended by the Chicago Police Department to investigate these false reports.”
Further, Webb said that the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office was unable to provide examples of how other cases were disposed of in a similar fashion. (Read more here.)
Wednesday morning update. Last night, the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board published a blistering editorial:
Tuesday brought fresh criticism for Kim Foxx, state’s attorney of Cook County.
Tuesday also brought fresh challenges for Kim Foxx, candidate for renomination in the Illinois primary.
With legal action and comments that undercut Foxx in both roles, special prosecutor Dan Webb complicated life for the prosecutor and the candidate.
Kim Foxx’s reaction? In a peculiar statement she cast herself as the victim of an unfair attack of the sort former FBI Director James Comey might wage in the era of President Donald Trump.
This shows why the Smollett case matters
Taken together, Tuesday’s developments underscored why the case of actor Jussie Smollett matters less because of him than because of what all of us are learning about Foxx’s judgment: She mishandled a case and now has citizens asking about equality under the law: whether some defendants in Cook County’s criminal justice system have to bear the brunt of the law while others get sweet deals from her prosecutors.
Webb’s announcement of a six-count criminal indictment of Smollett says to the people of Cook County that it takes a special prosecutor to pursue a case that their elected prosecutor inexplicably dropped.
And with early voters preparing to decide Foxx’s fate, a statement from Webb, a former U.S. attorney here, opens the candidate to fresh accusations of incompetence if not deceit: Foxx has maintained that her office treated Smollett the way it treats other defendants every day. She has made much of that claim.
Yet Webb says her state’s attorney’s office couldn’t point to those comparable cases.
Webb’s conclusion contradicts Foxx’s statement to WBEZ on March 27, 2019, that “every single day ... there are people who get similar arrangements, people who get diversion, people who get sentences that are probably not what some people would want. Every single day.”
Webb is saying Foxx’s office had no precedent or consistent policy to justify letting Smollett off the hook — but did it anyway.
Dan Webb’s harsh verdict on Foxx
In a prepared statement, Webb came down hard on Foxx — politely, he didn’t name her while critiquing her — and lambasted her office for botching the Smollett case and misleading the public.
Webb said he disagrees with the way the state’s attorney’s office handled the Smollet prosecution, but actually he went quite a bit further. Webb’s team investigated Foxx’s claim that her office treated Smollett as it does other defendants. But in the end, his statement suggests that her office gave Smollett special treatment. Webb wrote that Foxx’s office “was unable to provide this documentary evidence.”
Webb also pointed out that Foxx’s office, at the time of the original indictment in March 2019, believed it had strong evidence against Smollett — yet three weeks later decided to dismiss the charges, with 15 hours of community service as Smollett’s punishment.
Between the lines of Webb’s statement is a special prosecutor shaking his head in disbelief at Foxx’s management of the case. And perhaps he’s not done. In his statement he said he hasn’t yet determined whether anyone involved in the case engaged in wrongdoing, including the state’s attorney’s office or individuals in that office.
Those hate crime allegations
Webb’s six counts of disorderly conduct essentially reassert last year’s allegations against Smollett: that in January 2019 he faked being the victim of a hate crime and assault.
According to Tuesday’s fresh indictment, Smollett invented the story of being attacked at 2 a.m. in Streeterville by two men who used racial and homophobic slurs, punched Smollett in the face, put a noose around his neck and poured a bleachlike substance on him.
Smollett made this report to police knowing “there was no reasonable ground for believing that such an offense had been committed,” the indictment states.
Foxx evokes Comey and Trump
Foxx’s statement in response to the new indictment questioned its timing, implying that Webb is playing a dirty political trick on her: “The Cook County State’s Attorney’s office charged Jussie Smollett with multiple counts, and today the Special Prosecutor did the same. What’s questionable here is the James Comey-like timing of that charging decision, just 35 days before an election, which can only be interpreted as the further politicization of the justice system, something voters in the era of Donald Trump should consider offensive,” Foxx’s office said.
That’s a misdirection play from Foxx, who’s reading the indictment through her own political prism: The allusions to Comey and Trump have an air of desperation.
Webb, by contrast, is focusing on Smollett’s actions, Foxx’s prosecutorial judgment and her office’s dubious conduct.
Foxx said almost a year ago that she welcomed an independent review of her office’s handling of the Smollett case, remember?
Now the results are coming in, and they don’t look good for prosecutor Foxx. Voters will render their own verdict on candidate Foxx. (This is the editorial in its entirety.)
Click here to read the press release from special prosecutor Dan Webb.
Update #2: This is the statement from Jussie's attorney, issued last night. Note that nowhere does she say "Jussie is innocent and we have the evidence to prove it."
This indictment raises serious questions about the integrity of the investigation that led to the renewed charges against Mr. Smollett, not the least of which is the use of the same CPD detectives who were part of the original investigation into the attack on Mr. Smollett to conduct the current investigation, despite Mr. Smollett's pending civil claims against the City of Chicago and CPD officers for malicious prosecution. And one of the two witnesses who testified before the grand jury is the very same detective Mr. Smollett is currently suing for his role in the initial prosecution of him.
After more than five months of investigation, the Office of the Special Prosecutor has not found any evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever related to the dismissal of the charges against Mr. Smollett. Rather, the charges were appropriately dismissed the first time because they were not supported by the evidence. The attempt to re-prosecute Mr. Smollett one year later on the eve of the Cook County State's Attorney election is clearly all about politics not justice. (From the Hollywood Reporter, read more here.)
This is interesting:
Gloria Schmidt, attorney for the Osundairo brothers calls the 6-new charges against Jussie Smollett “a relief”— Charlie De Mar (@CharlieDeMar) February 12, 2020
She says brothers spent 30+ hours with special prosecutor between in person meetings/phone calls.
Ola and Abel will continue to cooperate. @cbschicago pic.twitter.com/FXCsKJYyfA
Update #3 on Friday, February 14: Jussie Smollett has had many bad days in the one year and change since he sent his hate crime hoax out into the world. Is he having a bad day today? No way to know. He may or may not remember, and it doesn't rise to the level of a "This Day In History" post, but it was one year ago today, on Valentine's Day, 2019, that his infamous interview with Robin Roberts aired on Good Morning, America. I read at the time that Jussie had really, really wanted to do that interview, which makes sense, given that publicity and fame were the whole point of the hoax. Unfortunately for Jussie, bad luck, bad planning and just plain bad karma combined to make the interview a very big mistake. (Watching it now, it's both pathetic and hilarious.)
The interview was taped Tuesday night, February 12, at the Chicago studio where Empire is filmed. What no-one, including Jussie, knew at the time was that the police had already identified the two "persons of interest" shown in this picture, taken from a surveillance camera:
The police knew their names, that they were brothers and that they were black, not white. They knew they had worked on Empire, making them professional colleagues of Jussie Smollett. They knew Jussie had spoken to them by phone within an hour before the incident, as well as while they were conveniently out of the country in Nigeria. And the police knew they were returning from Nigeria the very next day. Between the time the interview was taped Tuesday night and when it aired Thursday morning, the police met the brothers upon their arrival at O'Hare and took them into custody on Wednesday, February 13. During the GMA interview, Jussie told Robin Roberts that he had no doubts that the two men in the picture were his attackers, a statement I'm guessing he came to regret. (During his press conference a few days later, the police Superintendent threw some shade at Jussie by "thanking" him for confirming the identification of his two black, not white, colleagues.)
Is there anything else Jussie regrets? Publicly he continues to profess his innocence. Deep in his heart, where he knows what really happened, does he feel any regret? The whole wretched mess is an example of unintended consequences, having spiraled wildly out of control and now, a year later, putting Jussie back in the news and back in legal jeopardy. It's clear that no-one, not the lawyers in the State's Attorney's office, not Jussie's lawyers and not Jussie himself, anticipated how negative the reaction to the charges being dropped would be.
And what about his lawyers? If we stipulate that they're not stupid, they can't possibly believe he's innocent. The police investigators have a virtual tsunami of evidence that does not, as the police Superintendent said, support Jussie's version of events. (Do his lawyers have any evidence that does support Jussie's version? Presumably if they did, they would have made it public before now.) Speaking as the non-lawyer I am, I'm guessing they're not thrilled at the notion of going into court and trying to defend Jussie's actions. (The billable hours? That's another story. A celebrity with legal troubles is manna from heaven to a defense lawyer.)
So what do the lawyers do now? Are they trying to convince Jussie to plead guilty and accept some kind of a deal, or are they really going to go to court? Let's watch and see.
Click here to watch Jussie's interview with Robin Roberts.
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