*The former Chicago police chief who arrested Jussie Smollett for staging a hate crime in 2019 said the actor could have avoided a trial and public humiliation had he apologized and admitted to lying about the alleged crime.
“I want people to understand this. This was not the most heinous crime of the century. He didn’t kill anybody. He didn’t blow up a building,” Eddie Johnson, head of the Chicago Police Department in 2019, told NewsNation’s Morning In America.
“We would have been more than happy with just an apology at the end of all that we uncovered but for some reason, he just wanted to keep going down this road that he was actually a victim.”
Smollett was found guilty Thursday on 5 felony counts and not guilty on the 6th. He was charged with 6 felony counts of lying to police about being the victim of an attack in Jan. 2019 in Chicago.
READ MORE: Jussie Smollett Found GUILTY of Staging Hate Crime and Lying About it | VIDEO
The disgraced actor said at the time that two men yelled racist and homophobic slurs at him, kicked him, poured bleach on him, put a noose around his neck, and told him, “This is MAGA country.”
Smollett originally told police he was attacked by two white supremacists. He later claimed he was attacked by Nigerian brothers Olabinjo and Abimbola “Abel” Osundairo.
Smollett testified during his trial that after news of his hate-crime attack made headlines, he lost his livelihood due to the bad publicity. The actor was reportedly dropped by UTA and he hasn’t booked an acting gig in two years. As noted by THR, since the alleged attack, Smollett’s “prospects have drastically diminished,” the outlet writes.
Last week, a Chicago jury deliberated for about 9 hours over two days before finding Smollett, 39, guilty of disorderly conduct for lying to police about the January 2019 incident. He faces up to three years in prison, though with no prior criminal record it’s far more likely he would receive a lighter sentence including possible probation.
Johnson said he knew almost immediately that Smollett was lying about being the victim of a hate crime.
“I have to be honest, when I first saw the video of him in his apartment with the noose around his neck I was concerned because I don’t think there’s many black people in America with a noose around their neck and wouldn’t immediately take it off,” said Johnson.
“And the way he was so nonchalant handling it gave me cause for concern. But I would not let the police department make him an offender until the evidence just got to be so overwhelming,” he said.
He added, “To use a symbol like a noose to promote yourself is just unconscionable to me.”
Johnson said another red flag was Smollett’s Subway tuna sandwich that he was carrying at the time of the attack.
“He comes back, gets attacked in a supposed hate crime, and during all this scuffle, they poured bleach on him, when he got up and went into his apartment building, he got up and still had that Subway sandwich with him. That doesn’t happen,” Johnson said.
“When people get attacked like that, whatever belongings they have out there, they usually leave it until the police can go back with them because they’re afraid,” he added.
“This guy had the sandwich in his hand and it had never been touched. That was a real tipping point to us that something was amiss,” he said.
Johnson said Smollett “stained our city” and wasted police “manpower.”
“As the days went on and we started recovering that video, it became fairly obvious that something was amiss,” Johnson said.
Johnson said he initially didn’t want to treat Smollett like a suspect until he had enough evidence. That changed when he arrested and interviewed the Osundairo brothers, who said Smollett paid them to “fake beat him up.”
“When we arrested them and brought them in, when I saw the videos of their statements, then I could no longer protect [Smollett],” Johnson said.
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