Actor Jussie Smollett has been indicted by a special prosecutor in Chicago on six accounts for his alleged hoax hate crime last year.
Smollett contacted the Chicago Police Department in the early hours of January 29th 2019 saying he was attacked by two white men wearing pro-Trump Make America Great Again hats outside his apartment who put a rope around his neck used racial and homophobic epithets against him.
He also claimed the men shouted, “This is MAGA Country”.
The news provoked outrage and garnered immediate global media attention with many political pundits and celebrities jumping on the bandwagon to use the incident as an example of “Trump’s America”.
However, after a police investigation it was determined that two Nigerian brothers had carried out the attack. It was then found that both men were friends and colleges of Smollett’s on the show Empire and they then claimed that they were paid by star to fake the hate crime.
The case against Smollett was dropped however, with some noting that Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx had close ties with former First Lady Michelle Obama and that Smollett had campaigned for President Barack Obama and appeared with the first couple at public events.
Foxx recused herself from the case following reports she was connected to the Empire actor’s family and after reported contact with Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, Tina Tchen.
The new indictment against Smollett includes six charges of disorderly conduct for allegedly making four separate false reports.
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