The Chicago Police Department released unseen video recorded by a police-worn body cam the night actor Jussie Smollett claimed he was attacked by 2 men outside his Chicago apartment.
Smollett told police he was ambushed and beaten by 2 males wearing MAGA caps as he left a Subway restaurant on the night of January 29.
Smollett, who is biracial and openly homosexual, said the men shouted anti-homosexual and racial slurs at him, poured bleach on him and tied a noose around his neck.
On Monday, the police department released 70 hours of video footage collected by police on the night of the incident and in the subsequent days following the alleged attack.
The videos include footage from police body cams, various city, traffic and retail surveillance cameras, and footage of the 2 brothers who confessed to taking part in a hate crime hoax with Smollett.
In raw video taken from a police body cam, a man whose face is blurred meets police in the lobby of Smollett’s apartment. The man is later identified as Smollett’s creative manager, Frank Gatson.
The police informed Gatson that they were recording video and audio.
Gatson explains that Smollett is “kind of sensitive” and “his pride is in the way.” He said Smollett “is like a star” who “works on the show, Empire… He doesn’t want that to be a big deal.”
The actor is then seen inside the apartment, wearing a white clothesline looped around his neck with what appears to be a noose at the end of it.
A Subway sandwich wrapper is seen on the kitchen countertop.
One officer asked the actor if he wanted to take off the rope. “Yeah, I do. I just wanted y’all to see it,” Smollett responded.
Gatson informs Smollett that the cops are filming the scene. “I don’t want to be filmed,” Smollett says.
Smollett was later arrested and charged with 16 felony counts of filing a false police report and lying to police.
But in a bizarre twist, the charges were dropped by Cook County’s top prosecutor, Kim Foxx, after she allegedly spoke to Michelle Obama’s former White House aide Tina Tchen, who allegedly asked her to intervene in the case.
Last week, a Cook County judge appointed a special prosecutor to investigate possible misconduct by the prosecutor’s office. More charges could be filed against Smollett, according to ABC7 News.
Amid the public backlash, Smollett was removed from Fox TV’s Empire, but the show was unable to recover from the negative publicity, and Fox announced Empire will be canceled after the upcoming final season.
