Actor Jussie Smollett has been found guilty of five of six charges for faking a hate crime. BBC. Smollett had claimed that two men had attacked him with a noose, dumped bleach on him and said "welcome to MAGA country". However, his claims rapidly fell apart. The supposed attack occurred during a blizzard and cold snap and involved white Republicans in Chicago, a major Democrat stronghold. During the trial two Nigerian brothers said that Smollett had paid them $3500 to stage the attack. Prosecutors argued that he staged the attack in order to gain leverage in pay negotiations. Smollett denied these claims and continues to say that he was attacked. Each charge Smollett was convicted of carried up to a 3 year sentence, but with no criminal record it is likely that Smollett will not serve anytime in prison.
My Comment:
I am glad the jury reached the correct verdict. Smollett slandered half the country that supports President Trump and made race relations even worse. His action wasted thousands of hours of police time (in a city where crime is exploding) and probably hurt anyone who wants to report a real hate crime.
Of course Smollett's charges never made any sense. Most notable was the idea that anyone knew who he was. I know that the show Empire got decent ratings but I don't know a single person who watches the show. From what little I know about it, it seems like a show designed to a very specific demographic with no appeal to anyone else. Smollett seemed awfully arrogant to assume that not only did two random white guy Trump supporters would not only watch his show but care enough about it to attack an actor on it. Plus knowing that he was gay, which I don't think anyone cares about anyways.
It got even stupider. I remember when this happen and it was one of the coldest days of the year, right after a major storm. I can tell you, nobody goes out to commit a hate crime in the middle of winter during one of the coldest days of the year. The conditions outside that night were literally life threatening, nobody was going to be outside looking to beat someone up in that weather.
Even more ridiculous was the idea that Chicago, of all places, had roving gangs of Trump supporters running around beating up third rate actors. In case you are somehow unaware, Chicago is one of the biggest Democratic strongholds in the country. There are probably some Republicans in the city, somewhere, but they are totally outnumbered. And, again, we would have no reason to believe that the average Trump supporter would know who Smollett is, know that he is gay and know that he is a Democrat and risk a lengthy prison sentence to attack him. None of those things seem likely.
I also want to point out that it was pure luck that nobody matching the description that Smollett gave was found. It would have been very possible for innocent men to have been arrested, and perhaps even convicted and imprisoned, due to Smollett's lies. Let me repeat that. The only reason innocent peoples lives were not destroyed in this case was due to dumb luck.
With those being the facts of the case, Smollett had little defense. He could only claim that the two Nigerian brothers were lying about things while at the same time claiming that the attack totally did happen, just trust me. His story made no sense but him faking an attack did. A conviction was not surprising at all in this case.
A lot of people should face a reckoning for this case. Kamala Harris being one of them. Many of these politicians and celebrities used his "attack" to denigrate Republicans and, in some cases, commit racism. These people should be called out for this nonsense.
I do hope that somehow Smollett serves hard prison time. If I had my way he would serve as long as anyone convicted for his "attack" would have been. That won't happen but I do think that he should serve some time, the maximum possible. But that won't happen. He absolutely deserves the maximum sentence but as a celebrity with no record he will probably get out on probation...
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