Jussie Smollett is back in the news after the Illinois Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal of his conviction on charges relating to faking a hate crime in 2019.
Soros-backed State's Attorney Kim Foxx originally dropped all charges against Smollett after a Chicago police investigation revealed that Smollett had faked a hate crime alleging two men attacked him, making remarks indicating they were supporters of Donald Trump. His story fell apart almost immediately as the two men he paid to attack him confessed.
Smollett kept insisting that he was telling the truth, and after several months, Foxx dropped all charges. Smollett was forced to forfeit his $10,000 bond. He also claimed he performed "community service" even though no court ever ordered it.
Smollett is no longer claiming in legal documents that he's innocent of staging a hate crime. Instead, his lawyers are saying that since he forfeited his bond and performed community service, the second set of charges filed against him that resulted in his conviction was a violation of his original agreement with Foxx to drop all charges in exchange for his bond forfeiture.
A state appeals court upheld his conviction 2-1, but a lone dissenting judge opened the door for the Illinois high court to hear his appeal.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx later said she was recusing herself from the case after it was revealed she had helped facilitate conversations between Smollett’s family and the Chicago Police Department.
Months later, her office decided to drop the charges, saying it reached an agreement with the actor to forfeit his bond and perform community service.
However, he was indicted on new charges after a judge appointed special prosecutor Dan Webb to review the decision. Webb’s report stated the state’s attorney office had committed “substantial abuses of discretion and operational failures.”
Smollett's attorneys are arguing that the former "Empire" actor gave up something by forfeiting his bond and performing 16 hours of community service and that should have been sufficient punishment.
About that "community service," Jussie...
A special visitor showed up several days ago at 930 East 50th Street, a former synagogue now known in Chicago and beyond as the headquarters of Rainbow/Push, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson’s civil rights organization.
Over two days, Saturday and Monday, the visitor, the “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett, spoke with high school students who were thinking about college. He hawked civil rights gear at the upstairs bookstore. He gave tips to the social media, television production and marketing staffs. He promised to keep in touch.
The staff was “grateful for the opportunity to work with such a talented and humble personality,” Mr. Jackson wrote in a letter.
"He gave tips" to media staff? His own PR effort was an abject failure. I certainly hope they didn't listen to them.
Sixteen hours of community service does not begin to atone for his crime. Smollett paid the $130,000 the Chicago police spent on overtime looking for his MAGA hate crime villains. But the real cost was in the damage done to race relations in Chicago and around the country. Smollett's ploy only added to the distrust of all hate crime victims since so many of these hoaxes are perpetrated by attention-starved people.
Smollett was sentenced to 30 months of probation, with the first 150 days to be served at Cook County Jail. As left-wing as the Illinois Supreme Court has proven to be, I can't imagine the high court overturning that conviction.
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