Jussie Smollett Tells Jury He Did Not Direct a Fake Attack on Himself - The New York Times

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The actor, who is accused of asking two brothers to mildly attack him, and then reporting it as a hate crime, took the stand at his criminal trial on charges related to the 2019 assault.

Jussie Smollett took the stand on Monday in an effort to convince a Chicago jury that he did not orchestrate a racist and homophobic hate crime against himself but, instead, was the victim of both a real attack and the police’s rush to judgment in charging him.

Mr. Smollett, 39, submitted himself to questioning in his own trial to rebut the testimony of two key witnesses, Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo, brothers who told the court last week that Mr. Smollett had instructed them in detail on how to attack him.

The Osundairo brothers said Mr. Smollett took them through a “dry run” of the attack on the day before it was supposed to occur in January 2019 and asked one of them to bruise him without inflicting real injuries while the other put a rope around his neck and poured bleach on him.

Prosecutors have argued that Mr. Smollett staged the attack because he was upset that the show on which he starred, the Fox hip-hop drama “Empire,” did not take seriously a threatening letter he had received at the studio.

But Mr. Smollett sought to undercut the prosecution’s explanation, testifying that he had refused the studio’s offer of additional security, which would have driven him each day from his home to the set.

“I’m a grown man,” Mr. Smollett said. “I don’t need to be driven around like Miss Daisy.”

He also supported the defense contention that the brothers attacked him so that he might be scared enough to hire them as his private security. Mr. Smollett said that Abimbola Osundairo was persistent in trying to act as his bodyguard, at times behaving when they went out in ways that reminded him of the “Secret Service.”

And Mr. Smollett’s version of what happened on Jan. 25, 2019, just days before the attack, when the prosecution says Mr. Smollett asked Abimbola Osundairo for help “on the low,” was completely different. He was seeking a meeting, not to plan his own assault, but to arrange to get an herbal steroid from Nigeria that helps people lose body fat and is illegal in the United States.

“At any point in time did you talk to him about some hoax?” Mr. Smollett’s lawyer, Nenye Uche, asked.

“No,” Mr. Smollett replied.

During their car ride later, they did not plan the attack, as the prosecution argued, but smoked marijuana, Mr. Smollett said.

“We drove around and smoked and that was that,” he testified.

Olabinjo Osundairo, at the courthouse, where he testified Thursday that Mr. Smollett had orchestrated the attack.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press

Abimbola Osundairo, Olabinjo’s brother, told the court last week that Mr. Smollett was upset that a threatening letter he received had not been taken more seriously.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press

Mr. Smollett also sought early in his testimony to indicate just how happy he had been with his role on “Empire,” and, when asked directly, said he had no problem with Fox. Instead Mr. Smollett, who is gay, testified that it had been a blessing to win the role of Jamal Lyon, a gay singer-songwriter, that so closely mirrored his identity and to eventually earn $100,000 per episode.

“I had never seen a gay man — let alone a gay Black man — portrayed ever,” Mr. Smollett said. “I really, really wanted to do it.”

Over the course of the trial, prosecutors have sought to paint a picture of the attack as a bid for publicity, pointing to how, days before the attack, Mr. Smollett had received the letter at the studio for “Empire.” It included a red stick figure hanging from a noose, a homophobic slur and the acronym “MAGA,” said Daniel K. Webb, the special prosecutor in the case, in the courtroom last week.

“He devised this fake hate crime to take place so that the ‘Empire’ studio would take this more seriously,” Mr. Webb said, “because this fake hate crime would get media attention.”

But the showrunner for “Empire” at the time, Brett Mahoney, testified earlier on Monday that the show had actually taken the letter “very seriously,” and sought to provide Mr. Smollett with additional security.

As he began his testimony, Mr. Smollett depicted himself to the jury with a lengthy biographical summary of his career as someone who grew up in a middle-class family of performers, received some work as a child actor, became deeply involved in charity organizations and returned to acting, landing the major role on “Empire.”

In January 2019, when the attack was reported, public sympathy for Mr. Smollett was immediate and widespread. But as the police investigation into the report stalled, suspicion grew about Mr. Smollett’s account, though the actor stood by it.

Understand the Jussie Smollett Trial

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A staged hate crime? In 2019,  Jussie Smollett, an actor from the show “Empire,” told police he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack in downtown Chicago. The police concluded that Mr. Smollett had paid two acquaintances to stage the assault.

Others involved. Two brothers, Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo, told the police that Smollett, who is black and gay, had paid them $3,500 to orchestrate the attack, directing them to shout racist and homophobic epithets at him and place a noose over his neck.

The evidence. A text message between Smollett and Abimsola Osundairo sent  four days before the attack has become a key piece of evidence. In it, Smollett discussed needing help and meeting “on the low.” Security camera footage shows Mr. Smollett’s black Mercedes pulling up in an alley behind one of the brothers’ homes that afternoon.

Charges dropped. A month after the attack, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office dropped all charges against Mr. Smollett. The office had agreed to a plan where Mr. Smollett would do community service and forfeit the $10,000 bond paid for his release, in exchange for the office dropping the charges, with no admission of guilt.

The case is revived. Later, a judge ordered that a special prosecutor review how the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office handled the case. On Feb. 11, 2020., the special prosecutor, Dan K. Webb, announced that a grand jury had revived the case with a new indictment, and he criticized the earlier decision to drop the case.

“It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim, or a Mexican, or someone Black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me much more,” Mr. Smollett told ABC’s Robin Roberts in February of that year. “A lot more.”

Days after that television interview, Mr. Smollett was arrested on charges that he staged the assault.

The Osundairo brothers told the police that Mr. Smollett had orchestrated the whole thing, giving them a $100 bill to buy supplies for the attack, including ski masks, a rope and a red hat meant to indicate that the attackers were supporters of former President Donald J. Trump.

“He wanted me to tussle and throw him to the ground and give him a bruise while my brother Ola would pour bleach on him and put a rope around him, and then we would run away,” Abimbola Osundairo testified.

Prosecutors have cited as evidence Instagram messages from Mr. Smollett to Abimbola Osundairo on the night of the attack, updating the brothers on his flight delay.

In the nearly three years since the attack, Mr. Smollett has maintained his innocence, pleading not guilty to six counts of disorderly conduct related to filing a false police report and insisting that the attack had happened as he had initially described.

“They won’t let this go,” Mr. Smollett said in an Instagram interview last year. “There is an example being made, and the sad part is that there’s an example being made of someone that did not do what they’re being accused of.”

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