Culture JDS Megathread - Jussay Smollett files fake hate crime report and doesn't get away with it lol

'Empire' star Jussie Smollett attacked in possible hate crime
By Sandra Gonzalez, CNN

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cn...tertainment/jussie-smollett-attack/index.html

“Empire" actor Jussie Smollett was attacked in the early morning hours on Tuesday in what Chicago police are calling a possible hate crime.

Smollett was attacked by two people "yelling out racial and homophobic slurs" and "poured an unknown chemical substance on the victim," police said.

According to police, one of Smollett's alleged attackers also put a rope around his neck. Both fled the scene.

Smollett took himself to Northwestern Hospital and "is in good condition," police told CNN.

Later Tuesday, CNN's Don Lemon spoke to Smollett and a mutual friend who was at the hospital with the actor. Smollett confirmed the incident took place.

He was shaken and angry that an attack like this could happen. Smollett told CNN he fought back at the attackers.

"Given the severity of the allegations, we are taking this investigation very seriously and treating it as a possible hate crime," the police statement said.

Smollett has starred on Fox's "Empire" since 2015. He plays Jamal, a successful singer in the musical Lyon family. Like his character, Smollett identifies as gay.

"We are deeply saddened and outraged to learn that a member of our 'Empire' family, Jussie Smollett, was viciously attacked last night," a representative of 20th Century Fox Television and Fox Entertainment said in a statement to CNN. "We send our love to Jussie, who is resilient and strong, and we will work with law enforcement to bring these perpetrators to justice. The entire studio, network and production stands united in the face of any despicable act of violence and hate -- and especially against one of our own."

A representative for GLAAD told CNN the organization has reached out Smollett to offer assistance and support.

"Jussie is a true champion for LGBTQ people and is beloved by the community and allies around the world," a GLAAD spokesperson said in a statement.

Anyone with information is asked to call Area Central Detectives at 312-747-8382
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GrungyLawnChlorinate said:
www.fox32chicago.com

Kim Foxx releases Jussie Smollett files, offers recusal explanation

Chicago's top prosecutor released more than 2,000 pages of documents in Jussie Smollett's case on Friday and explained in a statement released simultaneously that she recused herself from an investigation into the "Empire" actor's claim he'd been the target of a racist, anti-gay attack because...
www.fox32chicago.com www.fox32chicago.com

also:
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Foxx needs the same treatment given to Mike Nifong, the corrupt prosecutor that pushed the Duke Lacrosse case. He knew it was a bogus case, but he was up for re-election and thought that playing up in the media how he went in hard on privileged white kids with a black accuser would boost his vote from the black community (no joke). Everything about the case was total clown world if you read about it. Nifong was disbarred and removed from office.

Of course, we're dealing with Chicago here, so chances of justice are about the same as the chances people on the South Side will stop shooting each other.
 
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Jussie Smollett Will Not Return to ‘Empire,’ Lee Daniels Says
variety.com

Jussie Smollett Will Not Return to ‘Empire,’ Lee Daniels Says

UPDATED: “Jussie [Smollett] will NOT be returning to ‘Empire,'” series co-creator Lee Daniels said Tuesday. Daniels was responding to a Variety report in which multiple production…
variety.com variety.com
UPDATED: “Jussie [Smollett] will NOT be returning to ‘Empire,'” series co-creator Lee Daniels said Tuesday.

Daniels was responding to a Variety report in which multiple production sources said that “Empire’s” writing staff was breaking ideas for the show’s sixth and final season with the expectation that Smollett would appear in the back half of the 18-episode season.

This is the first public acknowledgment that Smollett will not return for the final season of the Fox drama series. He was written out of the final episodes of the show’s fifth season following severe backlash stemming from accusations the actor and musician faked a hate crime against himself earlier this year in Chicago.

The same production sources also note tensions were ratcheted up on set between the show’s primarily black cast members, who still believe Smollett is innocent, and the mostly white below-the-line crew, many of whom believe Smollett is guilty.

Fox Entertainment and 20th Century Fox Television declined to comment.

Multiple “Empire” cast members penned a letter back in April that was sent to multiple Fox executives and series executive producers. “Together, as a united front, we stand with Jussie Smollett and ask that our co-star, brother and friend be brought back for our sixth season of ‘Empire,’” the letter read. It was signed by “Empire” stars Taraji P. Henson, Terrence Howard, Bryshere Y. Gray, Trai Byers, Gabourey Sidibe, and Nicole Ari Parker.

When the sixth season renewal was announced in April, Fox Entertainment and 20th Century Fox Television said that they had extended Smollett’s option for Season 6 but that there were no plans for him to return. Two weeks later, Fox announced that the sixth season would be the show’s last. Prior to the events of this year, Smollett was a key cast member on “Empire.” His character, Jamal Lyon, is loosely based on Daniels.

Smollett claimed that he was the victim of an assault which he said was racially and politically motivated, as well as homophobic. Later he was accused of hiring the men who attacked him and indicted for filing false statements. The criminal charges were dropped in March, and Smollett has maintained his innocence, but the city of Chicago has filed a $130,000 lawsuit against Smollett in order to recoup the cost of the police investigation.

The records in Smollett’s case were originally sealed, but a judge ordered in May that thousands of pages of documents on the case be released. Among the documents released were police statements from the Osundario brothers, who claimed that Smollett paid them to stage the attack, as well as text messages from the office of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

As Variety previously reported, Foxx has faced criticism for her office’s handling of the Smollett case. In the newly released messages, Foxx discusses recusing herself from the case, which she says was based on a false belief that she was related to Smollett.

Another batch of documents is due to be released later this week. Approximately 70 hours of surveillance videos and bodycam footage that was collected by Chicago detectives during the course of the investigation is also expected to be released to the public.
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375ee235262ec7862bca827a461d4615.png


I am still not convinced that Kim Foxx is not a gorilla in a wig. That is such an incredibly unfortunate face and her hair does nothing but accentuate it.
 
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It's HK-47 said:
View attachment 810107

I am still not convinced that Kim Foxx is not a gorilla in a wig. That is such an incredibly unfortunate face and her hair does nothing but accentuate it.
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Foxx, who recused herself from the investigation,
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Except she didn't. She publicly said she was going to recuse herself and then when caught talking to her deputy about it admitted that "lol I meant that colloquially, not legally".
 
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you know, I don't get all that upset about injustices in this world usually. Bad shit goes on all the time with no repercussions, but I REALLY hope that smug, race-baiting faggot gets his come-uppance on this one. Something about the guy is just so ugly at a fundamental ethical level, even if the crime isn't that big.

Hope to fuck they go after Foxx as well. I bet she would flip in a second for immunity and give up her handlers for the chopping block.
 
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Here's the 21 page order from the judge:
www.chicagotribune.com

Read the Cook County judge’s order for special prosecutor in Jussie Smollett case

Read the judge's ruling calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the Jussie Smollett case.
www.chicagotribune.com www.chicagotribune.com

Here's an more detailed article about the hearing:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news...0190621-jkpbw7sm4jcw3mm5ompfk7htxe-story.html (http://archive.fo/XFcUP)

A Cook County judge on Friday ordered the surprise appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the sudden dismissal of all charges against Jussie Smollett, saying the short-lived prosecution may have been legally invalid from the beginning.

Judge Michael Toomin ruled that State’s Attorney Kim Foxx had the right to withdraw herself from overseeing the prosecution of the onetime “Empire” actor but held no legal authority to then delegate that responsibility to her top deputy.

“There was no master on the bridge to guide the ship as it floundered through uncharted waters, and it ultimately lost its bearings,” Toomin wrote in the 21-page opinion. “… The unprecedented irregularities identified in this case warrants the appointment of independent counsel to restore the public’s confidence in the integrity of our criminal justice system.”

The decision marked a victory for Sheila O’Brien, a former state appellate judge who sought the special prosecutor in largely a solo effort, and a political blow for Foxx, the first-term officeholder who is seeking reelection next year.

“We’ll get the truth, the whole truth, under oath, and that’s what this is about,” O’Brien told a throng of reporters in the lobby of the Leighton Criminal Court Building.

It also represents bad news for Smollett, who potentially could be recharged by a special prosecutor. The whole episode has been costly for Smollett, who won’t return to his role for the final season of the Fox series “Empire.” He also faces a lawsuit from the city of Chicago seeking to recoup the cost of police overtime for investigating the incident, and his attorneys have been sued for defamation by two brothers who claim Smollett paid them to help stage an attack on him.

Foxx’s office had opposed the appointment of a special prosecutor, arguing it would duplicate the efforts of the county’s inspector general’s office, which has been investigating the controversy since April. But Foxx requested the IG’s probe, raising questions about its independence in some eyes.

In a brief statement Friday, Foxx didn’t answer the most pressing question: Would her office appeal Toomin’s decision to a higher court? Instead, she simply said she “respectfully" disagreed with the judge’s decision.

Smollett, who is African American and openly gay, found himself at the center of an international media firestorm after he reported in late January that two men attacked him near his apartment building in the Streeterville neighborhood, slipping a noose around his neck and shouting racist and homophobic slurs.

But Smollett was charged on Feb. 20 with disorderly conduct after Chicago police determined that he had agreed to pay $3,500 to the two brothers to stage the attack. On March 8, he was indicted on 16 counts of disorderly conduct alleging he lied to police.

Less than three weeks later, however, Foxx’s office made the stunning announcement that all charges had been dropped against Smollett with no explanation at an unannounced court hearing.

Weeks earlier, Foxx had recused herself from overseeing the prosecution after communicating with a Smollett relative. Later, her office claimed Foxx had not recused herself “in the legal sense,” a move that would otherwise have required the entire office to withdraw from the prosecution.

But Toomin shot that argument down in his ruling Friday.

“What was intended by Ms. Foxx, and what indeed occurred, was an unconditional legal recusal,” the judge wrote. “… Essentially, she announced that she was giving up all of the authority or power she possessed as the duly elected chief prosecutor; she was no longer involved.”

Foxx went on to name her first assistant, Joseph Magats, as “acting state’s attorney” over the Smollett prosecution, but Toomin held that she had no authority to do so. No such title exists, the judge pointed out.

Smollett’s case was “purported to have been brought and supervised by a prosecutor serving in the stead of our duly elected State’s Attorney, who in fact was appointed to a fictitious office having no legal existence,” Toomin wrote.

The special prosecutor, yet to be named by Toomin, will have a wide mandate. The individual may investigate “the actions of any person or office involved in all aspects of the case,” Toomin said, and could recharge Smollett or bring an indictment against anyone else if there were reasonable grounds to do so.

Toomin’s decision to appoint a special prosecutor came as a surprise in part because he had clashed with O’Brien at previous court hearings.

At the last hearing in late May, Toomin shot down O’Brien’s attempts to boot Cook County prosecutors off the case, denied her permission to take depositions of Foxx and her top deputy and rejected her multiple motions to transfer the case to another judge.

When O’Brien tried to respond at the time after Toomin ruled that another judge would not hear the case, Toomin grew sharp, making it clear who still ruled from the bench.

“You’re not running this courtroom,” Toomin, 81, who has been on the bench for nearly 40 years, told the former judge. “Either you’re going to go on to the next motion, or you will sit down.”

From the start, O’Brien said she had no agenda “other than seeking the truth and restoring public confidence” in Foxx’s office and Cook County courts.

In her petition for a special prosecutor, O’Brien wrote that Foxx’s actions “create an appearance of impropriety, a perception that justice was not served here, that Mr. Smollett received special treatment.”

O’Brien made much in her petition of Foxx’s purported recusal.

Communications later released to the Tribune showed that early in the investigation Foxx had asked police Superintendent Eddie Johnson to turn over the probe to the FBI after she was approached by Tina Tchen, a former chief of staff to first lady Michelle Obama. A spokeswoman for Foxx’s office said at the time that a Smollett relative was concerned about leaks from Chicago police to the news media.

Further communications turned over last month include texts from Foxx saying she was advised to recuse herself only because of false rumors she was related to Smollett.
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Some info about based potato nigger. There has to be some kind of angle. She's spent her retirement REEEing at the Catholic Church and it's not like there's any reason to switch gears to this.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/6...ge-pushing-jussie-smollett-special-prosecutor
Who is Sheila O’Brien, the retired judge pushing for a Jussie Smollett special prosecutor?
Veteran Cook County Judge Michael Toomin on Friday is set to rule on whether to appoint a special prosecutor to probe State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s handling of the criminal case against “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett.

The petition now before Toomin was the first in a flurry of legal briefs and subpoenas filed by former state Appellate Court justice Sheila O’Brien. Starting in April, O’Brien’s filings have catalogued a long list of suspicious circumstances around the case, which was dismissed just weeks after Smollett was charged, despite what Chicago police say was “overwhelming evidence” Smollett staged a hoax hate crime. The State’s Attorney’s office, and some unbiased observers, say O’Brien’s speculations don’t pass the high bar needed to start a Robert Mueller-style inquiry.

Many wonder if O’Brien is angling to run for Foxx’s job, or trying to stoke the controversy on behalf of someone who is. After a hearing in May, O’Brien insists she is the rarest of Cook County creatures: a nobody whom nobody sent.

“I’m a private citizen. I was in public life for a long time,” O’Brien told reporters. “I did this because I think it’s the right thing to do and someone had to do it.”

O’Brien retired from the appellate court in nearly a decade ago and has been known since, if at all, for her activism within the Catholic church.

Since retiring in 2011, O’Brien said she spent time with her family or caring for elderly loved ones, occasionally working as a legal consultant. Her law license lapsed in 2014, and she has been filing her petitions and appearing in court “pro se,” as a lay person. At court appearances she has mentioned, wryly, that she is wearing borrowed outfits, because she hasn’t needed a business wardrobe for years.

In a curriculum vitae she submitted with a report as a judicial ethics consultant last year, O’Brien describes herself as a “lifelong Democrat.” She has been married for more than 25 years to Chicago native Wayne Andersen, who was an aide to Republicans Henry Hyde and Jim Edgar before becoming a Cook County judge in the 1980s.

O’Brien grew up in downstate East St. Louis, where her father was a high-ranking police officer. O’Brien finished law school at Notre Dame and practiced in the St. Louis area, becoming a public defender in St. Clair County, and, in 1985, was appointed an associate judge in the downstate 20th Circuit. According to her CV, O’Brien was the first woman to serve as judge in the five-county circuit.

In 1991, she married Andersen. That year Andersen was appointed to a federal judgeship by President George H.W. Bush. O’Brien resigned from the 20th Circuit, and two days later was “recalled” by the State Supreme Court to fill a vacant seat on the Cook County bench —circumstances that several long-serving Cook County judges told the Chicago Sun-Times they had never seen before or since. In an email, O’Brien said she asked the high court to recall her, and then detailed a “warm story.”

O’Brien ran for an appellate court seat in 1994, winning the primary without the benefit of a party endorsement. Her campaign committee was chaired by Ald. Ed Burke (14th). Asked about her connection to Burke, O’Brien in an email said she “had been friends” with the alderman, now facing federal corruption charges, and his wife, state Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke.

O’Brien’s campaign contributor information was not immediately available, but Board of Elections records show she wound down her campaign account in 1999, meaning she raised less than $5,000 for her successful bid for reelection in 2004.

O’Brien has written op-eds criticizing the Catholic church for its handling of sexual abuse allegations against priests and the church’s refusal to ordain women as priests — in a Chicago Tribune piece, she encouraged parishioners to direct donations to their local church, not the Catholic hierarchy in Rome.

O’Brien served on the fundraising committee for gubernatorial candidate Chris Kennedy and volunteering for several races for judge or municipal government posts.

Virginia Mann, a longtime friend, said O’Brien helped Mann’s unsuccessful campaign for a city council seat in Evanston. Friends have tried to get O’Brien to run for office herself.

“I wish she would run for some public office, senator, judge, or anything,” said Mann. “She has consistently said ‘absolutely not.’”

Toomin has ruled against nearly every motion O’Brien has filed to date, including a request to have a judge from another county make the decision on a special prosecutor. O’Brien has said she believes she can appeal a ruling that doesn’t go her way, and seems likely to continue her fight.

“Who’s going to go in?” she said after the last hearing. “Nobody has, so it seemed like the right thing to do. So, here I am.”
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The total dismissal of the JDS case didn't fly well OUTSIDE Chicago, there's a chance to get some national positive play by looking into it.

I have no faith they'll manage to get any meaningful convictions out of it, nobody goes to jail in Cook County unless the machine says so.....
 
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Just released bodycam footage of police and Smollett. Only 33 seconds with super quiet audio.


Edit - Some additional reports attached.
 

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