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A disturbing story developing tonight in Chicago.
Actor and musician Jussie Smollett, from the hit showEmpire,
was attacked and beaten early this morning.
He was walking at 2:00 a.m. when he was approached by two unknown men
who yelled racial and homophobic slurs.
To think that I had two white guys attack a Black man in this city
was disgusting to me.
He was jumped by two men, putting a noose around his neck.
Support for Smollett exploding.
Viola Davis, John Legend, and Vivica Fox tweeting their support.
I've seen it last night. I think that's horrible.
It doesn't get worse.
I thought it was a horrible crime at first,
until it started to fall apart.
Go!
Police say they have seen no evidence of an assault.
Who is out in the street when it's cold as shit out there?
Do you believe all the details that you've heard so far about this?
I don't wanna say it's suspicious, but it seems sensational.
I was talking to a friend, and I said, "I just want them to find them."
And she said, "Sweetie, they're not gonna find them."
Breaking news as we come on the air.
Back up!
Police are investigating whether Smollett made the whole story up.
That was mind-blowing.
Two Nigerian brothers were arrested
in connection with the assault.
Oh my God. This is… this is madness.
Ifhe really did do this for attention, then he has to pay the price.
I would not be my mother's son
if I was capable of one drop of what I have been accused of.
Most people don't really know the truth
and what the actual evidence in the case was.
Did you ever once think, "What happens if he's telling the truth?"
Back up.
Somebody said, like, "Police in Chicago are racist."
"So they might probably trying to frame him."
What the fuck is going on?
The twists and turns of it are really jaw-dropping.
The biggest question is, "Who really can we trust
to tell us what happened here?"
This is the first time in my life
that I've ever agreed to speak publicly about this case, and it will be the last.
And it's already getting me fired up.
Chicago Emergency. Williams.
I just need the police to come by. Um… I work for an artist.
I… I don't really wanna say his name,
but somebody jumped him or something like that,
and I just wanna report it and make sure he's all right.
He didn't want me to call you guys, but I feel like we need to make a report.
Police were called to a condominium in Streeterville.
10-4, on scene.
A very high-end area. It's near the lake.
For lack of a better term, it's very, uh, yuppie.
We're on scene.
They meet a subject in the lobby.
-Are you Frank? -Yes.
How's it going?
I don't know. I'm waiting to see.
He's reporting that his associate
is the victim of a hate crime.
He is like a star. He works on the showEmpire.
So I think he doesn't want that to be a big deal.
-You understand what I'm saying? -Okay. You guys live together?
No, no. I'm just his creative director.
-My name is Frank Gatson. -Okay.
Come on in, sir.
Any weapons or anything in the apartment?
No. No.
The officers get to the apartment and see the victim,
an actor called Jussie Smollett…
The reason I called you is 'cause of this shit.
…with a noose around his neck.
-You wanna take it off? -I do. I just wanted y'all to see it.
That was something that I've never come across
in an investigation in 30 years.
I thought it was very disturbing. I thought it was repulsive.
-You're filming us, right? -Yeah, this is all videotaped.
-Why? -I don't wanna be filmed.
Okay, so can we… Can you turn it off?
Yeah. You're giving us permission to shut it off?
Those moments changed the trajectory of my entire life.
My story has never changed.
My story has remained intact.
Trust me, people have come to me and said, "Just say that you did it."
Why say I did something if I didn't do it?
That night, I landed in Chicago,
and Frank Gatson, who's my creative director, picked me up.
And then we got back to the apartment.
There was no food,
and so I went out to Walgreens, thinking that they were 24 hours.
Walgreens was closed, so I went to the Subway across the street.
I texted my manager.
I said, "Yo, call me when you can."
He called me immediately.
I'm good.
-And while he was on the phone, I heard… -Empire.
And I didn't answer.
I kept walking.
And then I heard…
Aren't you thatEmpirefaggot nigger?
I turned around, and I said, "What did you just say to me?"
-One of them said… -This is MAGA country.
Punches me right in the face, so I punched his ass back.
They were wearing balaclavas,
and I was able to see around the eyes and right here.
The person was pale-skinned, very clear.
There was a second person kicking me in my back.
And, uh, then it just stopped.
Then I looked down, and I see that there's a rope around my neck.
It was about three o'clock in the morning.
I got a phone call from my chief of detectives.
She says, "Supe, I got some bad news that you're not gonna wanna hear,
but you need to know this."
So she briefed me about a hate crime.
I hang up the phone, and I'm thinking to myself,
"This isn't good."
There was already a lot of tension in the city.
No racist police!
We don't need another high-profile incident like this.
I'm Rafer Weigel coming to you from the polar vortex of Chicago,
where it is so cold that our crews cannot even do a report outside.
I was at City Hall with every single press outlet in Chicago,
because they were having a press conference
to announce how they were going to be handling the second night
of freezing temperatures in Chicago.
A reporter from WGN was sitting in front of me,
and he says a celebrity had been attacked in a racially motivated incident.
I remember thinking, "How did they get the story before me?"
I said, "Who's that?"
He said, "One of the lead actors on the hit showEmpire,"
which was shot in Chicago.
Please welcome Jussie Smollett.
Things are going very well. Congratulations.
-So far, so good. -A hit TV show.
You just got your first record deal with Columbia, right?
Yeah.
Chicago does not have much of a celebrity scene.
If you become a celebrity in Chicago, you move to LA.
Considering the times,
considering that this was a racially motivated incident
involving a gay man and a celebrity, I knew this was going to be huge.
Breaking news,Empireactor Jussie Smollett assaulted in Chicago,
and police investigating it as a possible crime.
The TV is on, as it always was,
and I hear… in the background,
"Breaking news,
Empirestar Jussie Smollett has been attacked."
And atthatmoment, I knew this was bigger than I could really put my finger on.
Uh…
I called my mother, and I told her, and I certainly tried to downplay it,
I said, "Mommy, I was in a fight. I'm okay. Everything's fine."
Uh…
Then it just snowballed from there.
Police don't have any suspects or even a solid description of the men,
a reported crime that has rattled Hollywood
and just about everyone else.
You could not turn on the TV, you could not turn on the radio
without hearing someone talk about the attack.
It literally was everywhere.
As his assistant,
you have no choice but to grow close
because you're with this person every single day.
Jussie's bosses were calling him.
Lee Daniels, the creator of the show, they were really, really close,
and he made a very touching post.
Jussie, you are my son.
You didn't deserve,
nor anybody deserves, to have a noose put around your neck.
You don't put a noose around someone's neck for any other reason
than they're Black.
Lynching is coming back, right? I mean, that was the undertone.
It felt like a kind of threat against anybody Black.
Stand up, fight back!
To see Jussie attacked had a significant impact on a lot of us.
We don't have a lot of Black queer characters
that we can see on television,
andEmpirewas a pretty enormous show.
Aw, this is amazing.
It was a very concerning moment.
Unfortunately, various statistics confirm what most of us have observed,
that hate incidents are increasing in the United States.
So many of us felt like,
"If it could happen to him, it could happen to me."
Stars like Viola Davis, John Legend,
and Vivica Fox tweeting their support.
Former Vice President Joe Biden weighing in, saying,
"Homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts."
"We are with you, Jussie."
I've seen it… uh, last night. I think that's horrible.
Uh…
It doesn't get worse, as far as I'm concerned.
There was a moment where I went on social media
and I felt like I was being eulogized.
I felt like I had died and I was alive to see, uh…
And what people were saying was so kind, but it was too much for me.
It made me very uncomfortable.
It made me very…
extremely embarrassed.
Um…
It made me feel extremely emasculated.
Hold your head up, Jussie.
I'm with you. I'll be there in a minute. It's just another fucking day in America.
This is 2019, and it's a very charged time.
We were as polarized as we had been in this country.
Off our streets, commie scum!
Off our streets…
Yeah, it was a pretty crazy time, but it was just like,
who would wanna attack Jussie of all people?
And then it was kinda like just a slow aha moment
where it was like, "Wait."
Just a week before the attack, someone sent Jussie a threatening letter.
Like cut out from a magazine.
In the letter, it said, "You will die, Black fag."
Along with what it said,
there was a… a stick figure of a man with a noose around his neck
and a gun pointing at him.
We all assumed that it was probably a KKK member.
I feel that FOX handled it… perfectly.
I had gotten threatening tweets and threatening letters before.
It was what it was. I'm a very outspoken person.
I care about Black Lives Matter and… and police brutality.
That's what I care about, what I wanna talk about.
Jussie was brought up in a socially conscious household.
His mom was a part of the Black Panthers up in Oakland.
So I think that is why he fights for the things that he fights for.
I understand that I would get the vitriol and the ignorance and the negativity
that comes with being that sort of… voice.
I just didn't think that it would come to my home.
We were looking at what we describe as a heater case.
This is a city where the American dream is built.
Rahm Emanuel was the mayor of Chicago.
Kim Foxx was the state's attorney.
I came into office in 2016.
It was the bloodiest year we saw in Chicago since 1999.
So, of course, we had to keep them abreast.
But their edict was, "Get this solved as quickly as you can."
"If you guys don't solve this,
you're gonna be highly criticized."
And whatever it took for us to resolve it and bring these people to justice,
I was willing to do.
The preliminary police officers go to where the attack actually occurred,
and they see a video camera above them.
The camera that may have captured the attack.
So they pull the footage.
It's pointed in a different direction and does not capture the actual attack.
I thought, "Okay, this is gonna be tough."
That… that first day,
the detectives spent all that day canvassing and looking for more cameras.
So detectives started reviewing all the camera footage
in the immediate area…
and they see two subjects.
Jussie said there were two offenders, we see two subjects walking,
so, yeah, that was a positive lead.
We get a still photo, and we put out a community alert
to notify the public, trying to identify who these two figures were.
Chicago Police have released surveillance photos of the two men
they say could be persons of interest in this.
Hard to tell, though, bundled up.
They still have not located, though, video of the actual attack.
We go step by step, looking at the video footage
where Jussie pointed they ran right after the attack.
We see these guys running to the next camera
and the next camera and the next camera
and eventually get into a cab.
We were able to follow the cab all the way to Roscoe Village.
These two subjects were dropped off on the north side of Chicago,
and they proceed to walk through a residential area.
A lot of people have doorbell cameras now.
And after five blocks, they lose sight of 'em.
It went cold.
They're like, poof, you know, so now we don't know where they are.
Very frustrating.
At that point, the detectives said, "We've lost 'em here. Let's go back."
The detectives now gather the video in the downtown area
prior to Smollett coming out of the apartment.
They find two figures being dropped off
in the street of our area at 1:22 a.m.,
before the attack.
So we contact the taxi company and ascertained that the two subjects
changed transportation from a rideshare to this taxi.
Why would you switch from a rideshare to a taxi mid-trip?
I'm thinking that these guys are going to great lengths
to cover their tracks.
So the detectives subpoena the records to find out who these subjects are.
And they wait.
Four days after he was attacked,
Jussie had a show in LA scheduled at the Troubadour.
After everything that happened, I remember sitting down with my agents,
maybe two days before the show,
and them saying, "You should cancel the show."
And I remember being like,
"We cannot sit there and not do this show."
I'm not fully healed yet,
but I'm going to.
-And… -Yes, you are.
-That's right. -And, um…
I'm gonna stand strong with y'all, and I'm…
The atmosphere was electric. Like, it was just so many people there.
Now is the time! Be Blacker, be gayer!
Do it right the fuck now!
I love y'all.
The fact that he was able to go through
something this horrible and traumatic,
the fact he still found the strength in himself
to come and show love to his fans,
I think that says a lot about who Jussie Smollett is.
After the show, everything was done.
This is a blip, but we just had a triumphant show, so we're good.
We just didn't know what was coming our way.
To think that I had two white guys attack a Black man in this city
was disgusting to me.
But some things kind of struck me as a little odd.
We were going through the polar vortex at the time,
and I'm thinking to myself,
"Who is out in the street
with… with it being cold as… as shit out there?"
We had the video of Jussie Smollett when he came back into his building
after the crime had occurred.
So that's when we saw a Subway sandwich bag in his hand
that was in pristine condition, and I'm like, "Wait a minute."
Most victims of an assault likethat,
they're trying to get the heck out of Dodge,
because, let's face it,
who's to say these two guys that assaulted him won't come back?
The last thing they're worried about is grabbing a sandwich bag.
So that was a little odd to me.
Then there was the initial video of him in his apartment with the noose.
I do. I just wanted y'all to see it.
He says to the officers, "Yeah, this is the noose they used."
"I just wanted you all to see it."
And then he calmly takes it from around his neck
and kind of rolls it up like it's a prop.
Now, look, my family is from the Deep South in Alabama,
so I saw some things growing up.
I don't know of many Black people, if there was a noose around their neck,
they're not gonna leave it on there.
They're gonna treat it with disdain and disgust.
That was a little pause for concern.
Then when we asked Jussie for his phone, he doesn't wanna give it to us.
You know, so of course that raised a lot of suspicion on our part.
As a journalist, my job was to get the full story on the Smollett case.
So I called the public information officer at Chicago PD.
The first line out of his mouth was, "Yeah, it's a bunch of bullshit."
I said, "Is that on the record?" He said, "No, no."
"That is not on the record."
I said, "Well, what can I… what can I tweet? What can I say?"
He goes, "Just say that Chicago Police are taking this very seriously,
but that we're skeptical."
That was mind-blowing, to get that kind of color on a case.
That's never happened in my 15-year career, not foranything.
The fact that he went on the record saying that they weren't buying his story
was like, "Wow."
So I tweeted it out.
The leaks just kept on coming right after that.
Smollett not cooperating, not releasing the phone records.
I remember getting a phone call saying that they looked at the surveillance tape
and saw that he still was carrying his sandwich
while the rope was around his neck.
They wanted me to get that out there.
Do you believe all the details that you've heard so far about this?
I don't wanna say it's suspicious,
because you have to take somebody's word, their… their account, and… but it is, um…
I don't wanna say…
It seems sensational.
Pressure is building against the man who saysheis the victim.
Police say they have seen no evidence of an assault
in hundreds of hours of security video they've screened.
All indications are that something is amiss in this case.
It all started when they wanted his phone records,
and Jussie was a little wary about giving them
because he has so many people's, like, personal numbers in his phone.
But they flipped that to, like, "Oh, he's hiding something from us."
If everybody in the world had to open up their text messages,
what would they find?
For me, I live a full life, and I've made mistakes,
and to be quite honest,
the large thing that I did not want to get out there was my drug use.
I didn't want that out there.
I had to explain every single eccentricity of mine.
"Well, why would he be walking out at 2:00 in the morning?"
'Cause I always did that.
Just like the other four people that were at Subway that made it 24 hours.
"Why was he doing this? Why was he doing that?"
Like the rope.
I was not sitting there for 35 minutes with it around my neck.
We put it back on
because we wanted to show them what was happening.
It was like playing whack-a-mole with rumors, with lies.
Just, "Oh, that's a lie, that's a lie," but at a certain point, it's too many.
And you can't… you can't do that. You can't catch them all.
After a few days, the rideshare records come back,
which revealed some interesting information.
It reveals that there was one ride in the area that night at that time.
Just one. In that vicinity, just one.
This had to be these suspects.
The rideshare was summonsed by someone by the name of Ola Osundairo.
We see that this is somebody that lived in the Chicago area.
In fact, he lived just a block away
from where the detectives lost the trail of the two suspects.
The chief of detectives called me
to let me know that they had actually identified who these guys were.
And I'm like, "Beautiful."
We looked at his social media.
The most striking thing is that Jussie reports
that it was a male white that attacked him,
and Ola is a male Black of Nigerian descent,
which we found odd.
Then we see that he has a brother, Bola, an American of Nigerian descent,
who's also in very good physical shape.
Maybe Ola's brother, Bola, is the other person in the video.
So if that's the case, it does not fit with Jussie's account of what occurred.
We genuinely was looking for two white guys,
because that's who he described to us.
Now it's really not looking good
in terms of the story being exactly what he said it was.
Then I received news that turned the whole case
in an entirely new direction.
Further investigation, looking into Ola's social media,
reveals that the two brothers were extras on theEmpireseries.
They worked on the set ofEmpire. "Do these guys know Jussie?"
"What… what's going on here?"
When I saw they worked on theEmpireset, I'm like, "What the fuck?"
And then detectives discovered that the night after the incident,
Ola and Bola Osundairo had flown to Nigeria.
So we sit on the information and wait for these guys to return.
Let's turn to this Jussie Smollett incident,
because there's still a lot of questions that haven't been answered
in terms of what really happened.
There were calls every day, all day.
So many people were reaching out to Jussie,
wanting to do interviews, but he was declining all of them.
He didn't want to sit in front of a camera,
but FOX's PR team thought that it would be the right thing to do
to go on Robin Roberts.
She has a huge platform because of, you know,Good Morning America.
She is a woman of color, and she is part of the LGBTQI community,
so she would be able to understand his situation.
If that would
fix something and have people stop with these things…
Like, "Okay, so all I have to do is go on, say what happened, and then I'm done?"
"Cool. Let's do it."
Walking into the interview recording,
Jussie knew what he wanted to say.
I'm pissed off.
Is it the… the attackers?
It's the attackers, but it's also the attacks.
Listen, if I tell the truth,
that's it, 'cause it's the truth.
How can you doubt that?
Like, how do you… how do you not believe that?
-What happened that night, Jussie? -I see the, uh, attackers.
He said, "This is MAGA country, ." Punches me right in the face.
We started tussling. You know, it was very icy.
They ran off.
I want them to see that I fought back.
And I want a little gay boy…
…who might watch this to see that I fought back.
-Thank you, Jussie. -Thank you. Thank you.
The detectives ascertained that the Osundairo brothers
are gonna be returning from Nigeria.
All right, you guys just follow me,
and we're just gonna go right underneath this wing.
So they go to the airport. They wait for them.
-It's up there, boys. -We got it.
Where's them boys at?
I was in my office,
waiting on Chief Staples to call me the moment that they touched down,
and we snatched 'em up right off the airplane.
-Am I under arrest? -Yes, sir, you are.
-I am? -Yes, sir.
And they take 'em into custody and transport them
to the Area 1 Detective Division for an interview.
Sir, do you have any identification?
Yeah.
-Break 'em down for us? -Sure.
These two are our only leads.
This is what the video is pointing to,
and the subpoenas and the rideshares and the taxis.
Everything is pointing to them at this point.
So what's going on? Am I being arrested?
I don't know what you're here for.
Put your hands on the wall one more time. I already did it, but I gotta do it again.
We need some answers.
And do you wish to talk to us at this time?
No.
No?
But Ola and Bola refused to speak.
-Do you wish to talk to me at this time? -Mm-mm.
-No? -No?
No.
I know she felt the pressure fromme
because I was feeling the pressure from the mayor,
because he keeps calling me, "Did they talk yet? Did they talk?"
And… and, you know, you can't force 'em to.
So there was a lot of… a lot of angst on our part.
And I know you said you didn't wanna talk to us before…
We're only allowed, by state law, to hold persons of interest for 48 hours.
The police asked me to come into the station.
And they said that they already had somebody in custody,
and they showed me the pictures.
And I told them that
there isabsolutelyno way possible
that they did this.
I was friends with one brother.
He was also working as my trainer.
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever
that I could think that they would do it.
I said, "What evidence do you have
to show me that the brothers had anything to do with this?"
They wouldn't show me anything.
I flipped.
"For everything that I've shared with you guys,
you're going to bring me this, the exact opposite of what I saw?"
I saw a pale-skinned man.
I know what I saw.
I said I would not sign a complaint against them.
I know that it wasn't them.
You guys are full of shit.
The brothers could be charged with aggravated battery,
if… if that's what Mr. Smollett wanted to do, but he didn't.
So time is ticking, and the pressure's on to get to the bottom
of what's going on, but the brothers refused to speak.
And they eventually sought legal counsel.
I get a phone call so early in the morning.
My baby was on my arm,
and I'm like, "It's some international Nigerian number."
"I wonder who's calling me from there."
Six months earlier, I had called an Uber.
So the Uber driver was this wonderful lady, Mrs. Osundairo,
and I could see on her screensaver of her phone,
like, bodybuilding competitions.
And I'm like, "Oh my gosh. You have a beautiful family."
"Mrs. Osundairo, if you ever need an attorney, you call me."
"But if your children ever need an attorney,
have them call me too 'cause they're so beautiful."
And so now this guy's saying that, "We need an attorney."
"Police have a search warrant."
And he texted a photo of it saying, you know, "Things to be seized."
Then it said, "Empirescript,"
and that's when I was like, "Oh, man."
I said, "Oh, I'll be right down."
When I first saw Bola, he was very quiet.
Was just kind of, like, stone-faced.
Ola was kind of down
but answering my questions.
At that point, they had still been refusing to speak to police.
So that night, I go home,
and they aired the Robin Roberts interview of Jussie.
I want them to see that I fought back.
And I remember watching this
as my toddler's eating her Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
I'm thinking, "Oh my God. This is… this is madness."
I was talking to a friend, and I said, "I just want them to find them."
And she said, "Sweetie, they're not gonna find them."
That just made me so angry, because…
"So I'm just gonna be left here with this?"
At the airing of the interview,
I remember thinking to myself,
"I don't believe this guy. He just doesn't have a clue."
I downloaded it to my phone and then went to the station.
I'm sorry, Chicago Police. Sorry.
No phones in the jail. Sorry.
But I had to show them this. And I said, "Hey, good morning, guys."
"These are the headlines. It's this hour."
"And also, by the way, Jussie gave, like, an exclusive all-interview
to Robin Roberts."
The police have gone through a lot of video,
and they were able to capture an image of two people of interest.
Do you believe that they could possibly be the attackers?
-I do. -Why do you feel they could possibly be?
'Cause I was there.
I don't have any doubt in my mind that… that's them.
He inadvertently identified the two guys to the whole country.
And we knew it was the Osundairo brothers.
I played it for them, and Ola's reaction to this was like,
"How could he?"
And then Bola's reaction to this was like,
"Oh my God. What has he done?"
I remember asking both of them, "What do you guys wanna do?"
And they're like, "All right, Gloria, we're ready to do this."
"We're ready to talk to the police."
-Sir? -Yeah.
Come on. We're ready to take you upstairs.
Okay.
We're gonna make a right.
We didn't think that it would get this big.
But once we knew that he was running with it,
we started cooperating with the police.
I'm an actor. I also am a fitness coach.
We grew up in Chicago. Our parents came here from Nigeria.
I box. I model.
I am just an all-around great human being.
That's my job.
I started as an extra onEmpirein 2015.
Ola worked onEmpirebefore me,
but I became friends with Jussie first.
I had known Jussie for about a year and a half.
It was invigorating. Like I was important.
I'm friends with this star. I'm not just an extra.
I was at the gym,
and I received a text from Jussie.
He asked me, "Can I ask you something on the low?"
He has asked me to get weed through text before,
so I was wondering what could it have been.
So, eventually, I Ubered over to where they shootEmpireat.
Jussie pulled up in his car.
I get in the car. I'm sitting in the passenger seat.
So he started telling me about a letter that he received
and how the studio, FOX, wasn't taking it seriously.
He seemed very distraught about it, upset about it.
And that's when he told me…
"I want you to beat me up."
I literally…
stopped in my tracks.
I didn't quite understand what he meant.
So I was just there, dumbfounded,
like, "Damn, this dude must be tweaking or crazy."
"Or maybe it's the weed."
'Cause I done been around weed smokers, and they be tripping sometimes, you know?
So then Jussie told me that we needed another person.
I'm heading to grab the mail from the mailbox,
and I see a black Mercedes pull up,
and Bola sticks his head out and tells me to hop in.
Jussie was like, "All right, I need you and your brother to beat me up."
And I'm like…
I'm scratching my head, like, "Okay."
I never been asked to do something like this before.
He was telling us,
"This is just a thing that's done in Hollywood."
He was gonna take the footage that was caught on the camera
by his building and put it on social media.
I believe he wanted to be the poster boy of activism for Black people,
for gay people, or for marginalized people.
I thought it was crazy.
But at the same time, I'm like, "It's Hollywood."
"So I don't know. I'm… I'm a baby in it."
"So this is what they do. This is how it goes."
I was like, "If we do this for him, he's gonna help us out. "
"It's crazy, but let's do it."
He gave us a check of $3,500.
In my mind, I'm like, "This is another day on the job."
And that's exactly how we took it.
We were trying to track down the perpetrators of a hate crime.
We wanted to give Jussie Smollett his justice.
But it was all theatrics.
And now the brothers had given us enough evidence to prove
that he was not telling the truth.
I was like, "We got this dude now."
So we contact Jussie's team.
They said that they didn't know where he was.
I've dealt with celebrities.
Their team knows where they are.
We got the call directly from the TV executives at FOX.
We've represented some high-profile and notorious people.
Andrew Tate.
We've represented Chris Brown, Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson.
It's a long list.
Jussie was still being treated as the victim,
but the story, the narrative out there was shifting.
The police were setting up a narrative
that I am no longer
going with the investigation, cooperating with the investigation.
You would expect the victim to cooperate fully
and willingly in such a high-profile case, and that's just not happening.
So we spent a couple of days talking about the case,
and the Chicago Police Department was not pleased.
They kept hiding him from us.
So I finally said, "Okay, I'll tell you what."
"Tell them, if we don't find this guy by tomorrow,
I'm going to send our fugitive apprehension team
to actually arrest him."
The Chicago Police Department wanted him to turn himself in
by 5:00 in the morning that next day.
And so it was kind of frantic.
Now, all of a sudden, he was like a full-on suspect.
So as opposed to them going out and arresting him,
we wanted to turn him in.
Turn myself in where?
What exactly are they saying I have to do?
Three weeks ago, Jussie Smollett appeared to be
the victim of a hate crime,
but his face is now in the police mugshot,
accused of making the whole thing up.
Good morning, everyone.
I come to you
not only as the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department
but also as a Black man
who spent his entire life living in the city of Chicago.
Empireactor Jussie Smollett
took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career.
Eddie Johnson came out swinging in that press conference.
He even discussed possible motive.
We were… we were shocked.
Smollett attempted to gain attention by sending a false letter
that relied on racial, homophobic, and political language.
When that didn't work,
Smollett concocted a story about being attacked.
And why? Because he was dissatisfied with his salary.
All this time and effort spent on this, we were completely frustrated.
I mean, it… it's horrible.
Why… why would you do this?
I mean, the guy was making more per episode
than most people make in a year.
To stage a hate crime of that nature,
when he knew, as a celebrity, it would get a lot of attention,
is just despicable.
The evidence was just overwhelming.
Stunning new surveillance video has surfaced,
reportedly showing two brothers at the center of the case
buying what is believed to be a red hat and ski masks the day before the attack.
And that's when the public totally turned on Jussie.
I think the saddest part about this is that he has chosen, if true,
uh, to scapegoat Black queer folk,
who often are in the crosshairs of violence.
Why in the fuck would a grown-ass human being
lie about some shit like this when people are really getting attacked?
This has been the craziest Black History Month.
That third-rate actor…
…in Chicago…
…went out,
and he said, "I was beaten up by MAGA country."
Can you believe it?
If he really did do this to manifest it for attention,
then it is a heinous thing to do, and he has to pay the price.
But he has never--
And if he didn't,
then he's owed an apology, because he's getting dragged through this.
My personal reaction was
I… was not yet ready to draw any conclusions,
because I've seen that Chicago Police
has a century-long history, right,
if not more, of lying to the public.
Tonight, the Chicago Police Department
again under scrutiny.
He was framed by two Chicago police officers.
They manufactured a case against him.
The Justice Department is expected to announce
a civil rights investigation into the Chicago Police Department.
For me, it became about, "Who can you believe?"
It wasn't unbelievable to hear that something like this had happened
to a person of color, a queer person of color.
If he's saying to the world, "This is what happened,"
I'm much more inclined to believe him than I am the Chicago Police Department.
Why aren't they bringing charges against the… the two brothers?
So how does it go from potential suspects
to being under arrest to being freed?
I mean, how does that happen?
Good attorney work.
Good police work.
Why would Jussie hire two Nigerian guys to do an attack that he was gonna say
were perpetrated by white guys if it was gonna be caught on tape?
It doesn't make any sense.
Any comment, Jussie?
Do you have anything to say to the Black LGBTQ community?
I think it's important to ask,
"What if he didn't do this?"
"What if he is actually innocent?"
Somebody that I was talking to, they said, like, you know,
"Police in Chicago are racist,
so they might probably trying to frame him."
What exactly is happening?
This is not real. This cannot be happening.
Eddie Johnson said things that are factually untrue.
That I lied
because I was dissatisfied with my pay onEmpire.
So let me just break that down.
My relationship with FOX was very good.
I was making great money as an actor,
was also now making great money as a director.
The text message that said, "May need your help on the low"…
…that was a text to my friend,
Abel Osundairo…
who was also, at that point, working as my trainer.
That was for an herbal steroid.
I'm embarrassed to say, but for an herbal steroid
that was illegal here in the US
that could be gotten in Nigeria, and it was to lose belly fat.
I wrote a check to my trainer for a five-week period,
which was the time that he was supposed to be working.
It's a business check.
That's what it was for.
I was defending myself against bullshit.
Until this morning, Smollett had a lot of support,
like that of the show's co-creator, Lee Daniels.
Today, he was written out of the show.
In a joint statement, the top brass ofEmpiresaid,
"To avoid further disruption on set,
we have decided to remove the role of Jamal
from the final two episodes of the season."
Back up!
After posting bail Thursday, Smollett headed to the set ofEmpire,
where he reportedly apologized to the cast and crew
and denied any wrongdoing.
All of this was such overkill.
I mean, the charge is filing a false police report,
so we had these discussions with the prosecutor's office,
which was Kim Foxx's office, of how to resolve this case.
Kim Foxx is known as a "progressive prosecutor."
In other words, someone who said,
"I believe that we should be prosecuting fewer people, not more."
My lawyer then comes to me.
She says,
"They're offering that if you… forfeit your bond
for $10,000,
and we can say…
and we can show them that you are a good citizen,
they will drop this, and they will let this go."
"If this continues, this will go on for at least two years."
"Your career will stall, and people will forget about you."
Those are the exact words that she said.
And it was because of that that I made the decision and said,
"Okay, we'll do it."
Shock and fury after Cook County prosecutors
drop all charges against actor Jussie Smollett.
Mr. Smollett was afforded the same opportunity
that anyone in Cook County who had a non-violent offense
would be able to get.
I can't say that I was happy when the charges were dropped.
I feel like the charges should have never been brought to begin with.
I have been truthful and consistent on every single level since day one.
I would not be my mother's son
if I was capable of one drop of what I have been accused of.
I'm like, "What the fuck is going on?"
It completely blindsided me. Completely.
Even though Kim Foxx dropped the charges, it did not exonerate Jussie Smollett.
The sentiment was is that he was still guilty.
They just didn't wanna put him behind bars.
But he came out rallying, still playing the victim card.
Make no mistakes, I will always continue to fight for the justice,
equality, and betterment of marginalized people everywhere.
So again, thank you for all the support,
thank you for the faith, and thank you to God.
Bless y'all. Thank you very much.
To now double down and rub it in the face of Chicago,
saying he had been vindicated, that really pissed me off.
When I let the mayor know, he's just smoking.
You could see the smoke coming out of his ears.
This is an unbelievable not just whitewash of justice,
this is a person now who's been let off scot-free
with no sense of accountability of the moral and ethical wrong
of his actions.
Foxx must go! Foxx must go!
He's a celebrity. He's getting preferential treatment.
It ticked off the police, and it ticked off the judicial system.
I don't know what's going on in the state's attorney's office,
but something does not pass the smell test here.
Foxx must go!
Some people felt that Kim Foxx did not do her job.
So a special prosecutor was brought in to take care of the case.
Now to breaking news in the case of Jussie Smollett,
a new indictment against the actor.
He's once again facing charges in Chicago
for claiming he was the victim of a hate crime attack.
They also say charges should have never been dropped
after he was originally accused of lying to investigators.
It wasThe Twilight Zone.
It's the only way that I can describe it.
Jussie and I were kind of in disbelief.
There had been an agreement with Kim Foxx's office
that the prosecution would not proceed on this case.
It was a bargained-for exchange because he had forfeited his $10,000 bond,
and you can't renege on your deal.
This is not done.
FormerEmpireactor Jussie Smollett
will finally see his day in court.
When the trial happened in 2021, there was a great deal of hysteria.
This was Chicago's OJ trial.
Everybody paid attention to it. Everybody was following it.
Everybody wanted to see what was going to happen.
This case captivated the country.
And now here we are in the trial of Jussie Smollett.
I think we can see Jussie Smollett in the group right now.
Come on, back up, y'all. Back up. My mom's here.
Y'all, be respectful, please.
There's no way to necessarily know for certain what to expect
when you're walking into a trial, especially of this magnitude.
But as an adult, as a man, you wanna prepare yourself.
Just mentally, you wanna prepare yourself.
I think there was so much prejudicial pretrial publicity,
so by the time it was time for trial,
I think our firm were looking forward to him having his day in court.
The Osundairo brothers and their attorney were really playing to the media.
To me, there were things that felt like stunts.
Amen.
Was it daunting for me to go up against his lawyers?
Absolutely not,
because I'm never daunted when I have a case.
We put into action what we have been prepping on.
Osundairo's testimony is expected to take quite a while
and will likely be challenged extensively by the defense.
When Abel got up on the stand, I was so…
I just needed to know, "What is this? What is this?"
And I really felt like I just needed to, like, catch his eyes.
If he would look at me,
somehow I would be able to understand a little bit,
something a little bit more.
And that never happened.
At that point, it was a show.
Osundairo was on the stand for about four hours here.
He told the jury that Jussie Smollett thought up the attack.
Smollett told them they would need to choose a location
for the fake attack and do a dry run.
I see some of the officers, like, shaking hands with the brothers
as they're kinda coming off the witness stand,
and that's when I felt like I had a case.
The prosecution put on a lot of surveillance footage
to show that the brothers were involved in the attack, that they were there.
They tracked their motions.
But none of this actually tied into Jussie.
The only connection to this being a hoax
was the fact that the brothers said, "This is what Jussie asked us to do."
Everybody's saying you lied on the stand.
Did you lie on the stand?
But what was most incredible was
that there was a completely independent witness
on the night of the attack
who also saw the exact same thing that Jussie saw.
He was working at the Sheraton nearby.
And his testimony was heard during the trial.
In 2019, I was working at the Sheraton Grand, Chicago.
It was polar vortex. That's how I can remember it so well.
It was so cold outside.
I was doing my normal patrols.
I stepped outside the door.
I can hear feet steps.
I had my flashlight, so as I heard 'em, I turned my flashlight up.
A male was coming up fast.
He had a mask on. I couldn't see his full face.
I could just see he had the eye cut out.
So obviously, you could see his skin right around the eyes.
From what I saw, it was a Caucasian male, a white guy.
This man had said exactly what I said.
There was also a second witness.
I had the corner penthouse with the balcony
in the same building as Mr. Smollett.
I said hello to him once in the elevator.
I wanna say 12:30, 12:45.
And I was going to take the boys, my dogs,
out to do their business for the last time.
I went out the door,
and there was a gentleman standing there.
You know, he may have been waiting for someone.
It was a white man, maybe mid-30s,
and he had a beanie hat on.
Being a woman, being down there by myself,
I was kind of focused on him.
As I got closer,
I looked, and out of the back,
kind of sticking out of the back of his jacket,
you could see a little bit of a rope,
maybe just a couple inches.
And I remember being focused on the rope.
You know, I passed him going back into the, um, building,
and that was it.
The next morning, the concierge, her name was Diamond,
she said, "Jussie Smollett was beaten up and lynched last night."
And so immediately, you know, my senses went up.
And I said, "Diamond, I was down there."
"I could have seen the person."
"You know, I could have witnessed the person that had done this."
That's where we saw
that every bit of information that I had said had been corroborated.
And I have never spoken to or met these people.
This is as clear as day.
I thought to myself then,
"This is it."
"This… this is gonna exonerate me. This is it."
"Everybody's gonna see this and gonna report on this."
"And this is… this is the moment."
"This is it. Y'all see this? This is great."
The jury in the Jussie Smollett trial
went home around five o'clock without reaching a verdict.
So that means the earliest we'll have a conclusion
is tomorrow.
I did not watch the trial.
I just needed a break.
Jussie just became hyper-paranoid of everything.
So I pulled away.
You couldn't even have, like, a normal conversation
or, like, go for a walk anymore,
because then it all became a thing of, like,
"Is this person looking at me? Is this person judging me?"
I never had any doubt in my mind if he did it or not,
not once, ever.
But it is just hard to be around somebody like that,
who's always on
alert, high alert.
He always said, like, "My job is dependent on if people like me,
you know, as an actor."
And
it's always in the back of his mind if someone believes him or not.
Tonight, breaking news as we come on the air,
the verdict in the Jussie Smollett trial.
At this point, we're waiting to hear what it is.
After all the testimony and all the proceedings,
the jurors took two days to reach a verdict.
Oh, here we go. They're coming out.
We have a producer in the courtroom who is texting me right now
that Smollett is guilty on the first five charges.
There's lying about a hate crime because he's a Black gay man.
There's lying about battery because he was injured.
And then there's lying about aggravated battery
because he said that his attackers were wearing masks.
You are now a permanently convicted felon.
You're a charlatan pretending to be a victim of a hate crime,
and that's shameful.
Your very name has become an adverb for lying.
It was very hard to predict what the judge could do.
Let me tell you, Mr. Smollett,
I know that there is nothing that I will do here today
that can come close to the damage you've already done to your own life.
I'm sentencing you to 30 months felony probation,
and the probation is gonna be to this court.
You will pay restitution to the city of Chicago
in the amount of $120,106.
You are fined $25,000, which is the maximum fine.
And you will spend the first 150 days of your sentence
in the Cook County Jail,
and that will start today, right here, right now.
I was shocked that he remanded him into custody.
It seemed crazy that he would impose custodial time.
Your Honor, I respect you, and I respect the jury,
but I did not do this.
I am innocent.
-I am not suicidal! -Stop locking up our Black men!
I am not suicidal, and I am innocent!
I could have said that I was guilty a long time ago.
A hundred and fifty days in jail, beginning tonight.
The hammer of justice fell hard today on Jussie Smollett.
I doubt many people expected the outburst that we saw there at the end.
He seemed to be alluding to the fact he thought
something could happen to him in Cook County Jail.
Boy, what a way for an actor to end the end of his sentencing.
The jury in Chicago has found actor Jussie Smollett
guilty of staging a homophobic and racist attack on himself.
Two brothers testified that…
This is a huge story.
Everybody watched this spectacular fall from grace.
As I was watching it, for me,
the key question at the heart of this was, "Why?"
Who would make up their own hate crime?
What a strange thing to do.
Because now, Jussie is ahugeinternational joke.
The gay community started accusing the African-American community
of being homophobic for not supporting him.
Whattheydidn't understand is that weweresupporting him
with our silence.
Becauseweunderstood
that this nigga was clearly lying.
My brother does not deserve this.
I've watched my brother go from being a complete victim,
which he still is.
He was attacked.
I saw my brother get locked up for being attacked.
Do you know how crazy that is?
Jussie didn't have an agent at that time,
so I decided to get in touch with his brother and sister.
Well, I always remember that Zoom because it didn't go very well.
I came in with the attitude of Jussie Smollett being guilty,
and they believed that this had happened to Jussie for real,
that he was a victim,
and that he had suffered a real hate crime.
That judge chastised him.
He chastised my brother. He does not deserve this.
Of course they're going to say he's innocent.
This is his brother and sister.
But I found them to be sincere, and that lingered on with me quite a bit.
So I decided to look a little bit deeper.
I went beyond the headlines and went beyond the clickbait,
and I found there was no hard proof
connecting the Osundairo brothers to the crime.
There were no eyewitnesses that identified the Osundairo brothers.
There was no forensics.
I came across a journalist
who was also researching the Jussie Smollett case.
I'm an investigative journalist.
My dad grew up in Chicago.
The Black community in Chicago has been speaking out
about being mistreated by the police for many, many years,
and I think it's very important that we don't just,
uh, jump to conclusions because the police make a statement.
So I started to get my hands on the police reports for Jussie's case.
Basically, 500 pages.
They had the officers' names and their badge number.
So I looked into the 38 detectives and supervisors
that were assigned to this case.
They had a combined 563 misconduct allegations
formally filed against them by the citizens of Chicago…
…ranging from, like, criminal sexual misconduct
to shooting people and selling drugs.
And they were also sued for misconduct 16 times,
with the city paying out those 16 times.
One of the first people that shows up on the scene
was accused, in a formal complaint,
of homophobic hate speech against a Black man.
I spent a lot of time reading all these police reports.
I saw the two witnesses who described to police
white men at the scene.
Anthony Moore, the security guard at the Sheraton Hotel,
was interviewed by the police several times,
and he always kept saying the same thing,
that the guy was a white guy.
And I started having questions.
"What happened to them?"
"How were they treated?"
"Why were these people ignored?"
After I gave my statement to the police,
they called me, told me when to come into the police station,
and they provided a lineup.
They told me to pick the person that I saw,
but they're all Black males on the picture.
So I told the detective, "I can't pick no one
because the person I saw was a white person."
The detective said, "I understand that, but if you had to pick someone,
who would be the closest to what you've seen?"
So it was a person I picked.
It obviously was the most light-skinned person on there,
that wasn't even light-skinned, honestly.
I said, "I'm telling you now,
this is not the person that ran past that I seen."
And he said, "No, no, that's fine."
What was my purpose of giving you my story?
Because you're ignoring everything I just said… to fit what's going on,
whatever their narrative was.
But I saw what I saw.
The police reports mentioned a video of Anthony Moore
just as the attackers are running by.
So I was then obviously, like, very interested to see it for myself.
So I request this video from them.
When I got it,
it does show him walking to the door.
And it looks like it's gonna show him
shine his flashlight in the first guy's face.
But just as Anthony Moore opens the door to go outside,
the video jumps ahead.
The video seems to jolt,
but when I look at the clock,
it jumps ten seconds.
And that is a vital ten seconds that we lose.
It erases the guy who Anthony Moore says is white
and wearing a black face mask running by him.
And it misses Moore shining the flashlight in his face.
So I wrote to them immediately and said, "Please send me those ten seconds."
But they didn't give it to me.
Why did they take it out,
you know, if they did?
Because it seems like maybe you could see that the guy was white
right on the footage
if you could see him shining the flashlight.
Like, it's clear enough that you might have been able to see
that the guy was a white guy.
So this, to me, was like the biggest red flag possible, you know?
Because I know Chicago Police's history of tampering with evidence,
hiding video evidence,
like they allegedly did in the Laquan McDonald case.
Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times
by Officer Jason Van Dyke
in a case that has taken more than a year to investigate.
At first, the shooting happened with basically little to no fanfare.
The narrative was that he had been shot after an altercation.
And then the video of the shooting gets out.
The video shows Officer Jason Van Dyke on the left
firing just six seconds after leaving his cruiser.
Most of the shots hit Laquan McDonald when he was already on the ground.
Then it became clear that this boy had been shot 16 times in cold blood.
There was a real kind of collusion, right, to keep the public from knowing.
These defendants lied about what occurred during a police-involved shooting…
Cover-up!
…in order to prevent independent criminal investigators
from learning the truth.
They have released surveillance tape from a Burger King
with an 80-minute gap that includes the time of the shooting.
The Burger King district manager alleges
officers deleted video from cameras at the restaurant.
When I saw that the Chicago Police have form
when it comes down to missing evidence…
it made my jaw drop.
Now I wanted to find a clear image of the suspects,
so I request every video of them by filing Freedom of Information Act requests.
In most of the videos, the suspects just look like silhouettes.
You can't see anything,
or they're just corrupted and it's pixelated.
But then, in one video, it switches
to a color scene, and it's bright and lit.
These two guys walk on the scene.
And the first guy is unmasked.
You actually get the full-frontal face, in color, of one of the suspects
that appears to be white.
I thought, "What's going on?"
This doesn't look like the brothers.
This is more the way that Jussie Smollett described his two attackers.
That's when I started to think,
"Could it be possible that Jussie Smollett is actually innocent?"
An Illinois Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal from Jussie Smollett.
We feel 100% confident that this case will be, uh, won on appeal.
We remain 100% confident in our client's innocence.
We've seen this happen in other cases
where convictions have been reversed on this basis.
There were so many things done that were just contrary
to what the law allows and what happens in your typical case.
The investigation was very strange.
Why would police not listen to these witnesses?
Why would they go with this very different narrative?
Sixteen shots!
Sixteen shots and a cover-up!
The Laquan McDonald case was a real stain
on the Chicago Police Department's reputation.
Hundreds of angry protesters are taking to the streets of Chicago.
It was a very emotional and galvanizing moment
for the general public, who recognized that a police department
that is willing to cover up the killing of a child
needed to be overhauled.
Sixteen shots! Sixteen shots! Sixteen…
Just two weeks before Jussie's case,
the police officer who murdered Laquan McDonald
was sentenced to six and a half years in prison.
They falsified those police reports.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand what they did was illegal.
Chicago Police wanted some good attention.
They wanted to be seen like the trustworthy, upstanding police.
And they wanted a win.
Suddenly, with Jussie's case,
they just… became the heroes of the story.
The detective work that we saw in this case
is indicative of the work
that our detectives do every day in this city.
When the police first arrested the brothers,
they refused to make any statements.
They were put in several lineups with key witnesses, taxi drivers,
the guard at the Sheraton,
and not once were they picked out of the lineup.
There were also no forensics
that placed the Osundairo brothers at the scene.
Two people's DNA were found on the noose, but neither belonged to the brothers.
Which means, for the police hoax narrative to work,
the importance of the confession of the Osundairo brothers
is absolutely critical.
Interestingly, the police reports showed
that the first day the brothers were in custody,
more than a dozen police officers started searching their house with a warrant.
Put the dogs away.
Put them in the bathroom right now. We don't wanna shoot 'em.
They found several guns,
assault rifles,
several boxes of ammunition,
a 9mm.
This was like kind of a cache of dangerous guns.
Now, this is where it's important to distinguish Ola from Abel,
because Ola is a convicted felon.
In 2011, he was involved in an attempted murder,
and that was pled down to aggravated battery.
And he is not allowed to possess firearms.
Ola now could potentially be facing the prospect of going back to prison.
This gives a massive advantage to the Chicago Police Department.
They havehugeleverage over Ola Osundairo.
What happened in that interrogation room
became key.
The Chicago Police Department andthe Osundairo brothers
have all said there was no deal made.
But footage came across my desk that I wasn't meant to see.
And it's certainly footage that you're not meant to see.
And it includes a confidential conversation
between Ola Osundairo and his lawyer,
Gloria Schmidt.
-Expunged is like expunged. -Like it never happened.
They toss it like it never happened, right.
When it's sealed, only the police have access to it.
Right.
Gloria Schmidt is outlining for Ola
the difference between having your record expunged or sealed.
And Ola is an aspiring actor.
A person from the public, like a publicist,
an agent, a movie director, they can't find anything that's sealed.
-That's "sealed"? -Right.
But he's got a felony on his record.
And to my eyes, that's when the brothers broker a deal.
How did… how did my brother seem?
Conflicted as hell.
All right.
The brothers brokered a deal to get themselves off the hook.
So just to reiterate now,
we didn't make you any promises, right?
And they lied when they said that they were at the scene.
All the evidence from the scene shows that there were white men there.
The brothers were not there.
Let's get a check of your 7:30 headlines.
Actor Jussie Smollett was released from jail last night
after serving just six nights of a 150-day sentence.
An appeals court in Chicago granted a motion
that Smollett be released on bond while he appeals his conviction.
I'm supposed to be happy because they let me out of jail
after six and a half days.
I'm supposed to be happy about that. I'm supposed to be grateful for that. Why?
To whom?
I cannot stand the brothers for what they did,
for how they've allowed themselves to benefit.
I wanted to bring in some professional hoaxers.
Joining me now, Ola and Bola Osundairo.
I threw the first punch, made it look like he fought back,
and then he walked away with the Subway sandwich.
Man.
And if anybody says anything about my jacket,
I have two guys I can hire to beat them up.
That's right.
But with that said,
I see that, from the beginning,
they were victims in this.
The public don't wanna be lied to by corrupt authority figures.
They deserve to know all the information and make an informed decision.
We're pleased to have with us today
independent investigative reporter Chelli Stanley.
The police searched their home,
and what they said they found was a cache of arms,
including tactical weapons,
a rifle, shotgun, a Glock 45.
The brothers were being kind of coaxed into taking a deal.
"Independent investigative reporter," I think "Chelli" something,
inferred
that we'd pushed those brothers into a position to where they… they lied.
It just fucking just kills me
when people just throw this kind of shit out there.
I have no…
What kind of bizarro world are they living in?
The police don't have the authority to seal somebody's record.
Ola's record is not sealed or expunged.
You can still find it. It's ridiculous.
There was no deal with the police.
You don't need an immunity deal when you're telling the truth.
-Where would I be facing… -Then, "What did you say to me?"
-I just swung off him like that. -So you used that hand off this side?
Yeah, off this side, and then…
I was conflicted. I didn't wanna go expose him.
I wanted him to be a man and come out and say what happened himself.
You can read police investigations,
you can FOIA the records,
but you gotta stick with the facts in the file.
They're just creating a distraction. "Look at this and look at this."
But if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck,
it's a freaking duck.
Some people willnevertrust the Chicago Police Department.
And I'm not saying they don't have valid reason.
Are there still racist cops in CPD?
Sure there are.
So it's easy for people to say, "Aha! It's the Chicago Police Department."
"They are not telling the truth."
It's just insulting.
There's one thing you need to know
about Superintendent Eddie Johnson.
He was later fired for misconduct.
Chicago's top cop out of a job.
Fired just days before he was set to retire.
The new report, which included video evidence,
found Johnson lied after an incident in October
when officers found him in a parked police vehicle,
asleep at the wheel.
Sir?
Chicago's top cop says he was having a medical episode.
But surveillance footage shows him drinking, quote,
"For a few hours prior to the incident."
Can you say exactly how he lied to you?
Well, a lie is a lie.
I have no problem with saying, 1,000%, they are liars,
because
they made it up.
Every single bit of it.
For him to keep doubling down,
professing his innocence,
despitethe mountain of evidence that's to the contrary,
makes me think he's just a very narcissistic
and troubled young man.
Just seeing all the evidence the police put together…
…I became obsessed about this piece of footage.
That's definitely not the Osundairo brothers,
and it's right up there for everyone to see.
And nobody saw it
because they've been told over and over again,
"It was the Osundairo brothers."
White is Black.
Press play and just say what you see.
I see a video of an orange cab.
Two subjects walk by.
The two subjects are… appear to be male Black.
This isn't who they said it was.
You can see that he's white.
Just flip it down and it should be there.
Okay.
There's no doubt in my mind these are the brothers.
I don't see two white guys on here.
As America is getting increasingly divided,
people sort through information that agrees with what they already think,
and the truth is whatever you kind of want it to be.
Yeah, that's a video of Ola and I.
Of the first person crossing?
Oh my gosh.
It looks like a white person.
Just say what you see.
I see a man walking past a cab. I see another man walking past a cab.
African American Black males.
I don't recognize who that is.
It looks like a white man.
No, wait.
An explosive case combining politics,
identity, and alleged lies came to a dramatic conclusion today.
They have said, "You cannot go after him again,
because the prosecutors in this case made a deal."
He had forfeited his $10,000 bond,
so you can't re-prosecute.
The special prosecutor says today's decision, quote,
"Does not clear Jussie Smollett's name. He is not innocent."
So does he just get away with it, or does this mean what he said was true?
At the end of the day,
it doesn't matter whether someone likes me or doesn't like me.
It doesn't matter whether you like the way I'm giving this interview.
It doesn't matter whether you like the way I look right now or not.
It doesn't matter whether you love my performances
or you can't stand them.
That's unimportant.
What is important is, regardless of what you think about me,
flaws and all, flaws and greatness,
whatever you think,
joy or sorrow,
the fact is I didn't dothat,
and that's all that matters.
-Hey, everybody. -Hey!
I am just beyond honored to be here.
When you see these images, it depicts Hunter Biden.
FOX Nation is improperly using that to commercially exploit Hunter.
I personally believe he was put up to it by somebody in a political position.
We have all of this in our book that we're actually releasing.
That we've already written, calledBigger Than Jussie:
The Modern-day… The Need… The Mod…What is it?
The Disturbing Need for a Modern-day Lynching.
I'm like, "Why don't you have Jussie, I'll get the brothers,
have them go do aSaturday Night Liveskit?"
They would all have a good laugh, and we could move on from this.
Bigger Than Jussie: The Modern Need…
What is it?
The Disturbing Need for a Modern-day Lynching.
So we have a book coming out.