*The Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, is not at all happy with what happened today regarding criminal charges being dropped against actor Jussie Smollett.
He condemned the Cook County State’s Attorney’d office for the decision. He called it “a whitewash of justice.”
“This is a whitewash of justice,” Emanuel said Tuesday afternoon during a fiery press conference alongside Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson. “A grand jury could not have been clearer.”
As we reported earlier, seemingly out of nowhere, all charges were dropped against Smollett Tuesday morning by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. Earlier, the “Empire” star was indicted on 16 felony counts of disorderly conduct. He was accused of lying to police regarding a Jan. 29 incident, in which he said he was randomly attacked by two white men wearing Donald Trump MAGA caps shouting racial and homophobic slurs.
Superintendent Johnson, like Emanuel, was also pissed at the reversal and said this:
“Do I think justice was served? No,” he said, adding that he stands behind the work of the detectives. “I’ve heard that they wanted their day in court with TV cameras so America could know the truth. But no, they chose to hide behind secrecy and broker a deal to circumvent the judicial system … I stand behind the detectives’ investigation.”
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If you’re wondering if there was some kind of fix or something, Smollett’s attorney, Patricia Brown, said during an earlier press conference Tuesday “there was no deal” to get the charges dropped.
“The state dismissed the charges.” Smollett spoke shortly after Holmes, reiterating that he has been “truthful and consistent on every level since day one. I would not be my mother’s son if I was capable of one drop of what I’ve been accused of.”
An angry Emanuel argued that the grand jury’s decision was reason for going forward with the case against Smollett. He pointed out that the grand jury handed out those indictments “based on only a piece of the evidence that the police had collected,” and added that $10,000 that Smollett is forfeiting “doesn’t even come close to what the city spent in resources.”
Both Emanuel and Johnson remained convinced that Smollett committed a hoax by falsely reporting a hate crime.
“If he wanted to clear his name the way to do that was in a court of law so that everyone could see the evidence,” said Johnson. Added Emanuel: “Mr. Smollett is still saying that he is innocent, still running down the Chicago Police department. How dare him. How dare him. After everybody saw – and I want to remind you, this is not the Superintendent’s word against his – a grand jury, a sliver of the evidence, and they came to a conclusion. As did the State’s Attorney’s office.”
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