Jussie Smollett’s Lawyers Blame Cost of Investigation on Police Department
Great argument, guys…
![https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN-LscWv0O8](https://c4.legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Jussie-Smollett.png)
Jussie Smollett, now infamous for allegedly paying a couple of dudes to stage a hate crime, has been billed by the city of Chicago for the investigation into his faux allegations. That tab is just over $130,000. In April, the city sued Smollett for failure to reimburse the costs associated with investigating a “false police report.”
Tuesday night, Smollett’s lawyers argued that it’s not Smollett’s part the Chicago Police Department racked up a $130k bill investigating a crime his client claimed transpired.
The Chicago Sun Times has more:
The actor, once a star of the hit-TV series “Empire,” is making one last attempt to get a city lawsuit against him tossed out of federal court before it proceeds to trial.
Sneed learned exclusively that late Tuesday night, his attorneys filed a motion responding to the city’s claim that he should pay the city more than $130,000 to cover police overtime and other costs. The city says the costs were incurred in connection with an investigation into a report he filed claiming he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack in River North. Police later charged Smollett with staging the attack.
Attorneys for Smollett deny the actor made up the attack, and note charges were ultimately dropped by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
“My client from the beginning has maintained his innocence and disputed the city’s allegations,” said William J. Quinlan, of The Quinlan Law Firm, who filed the motion. He noted that “it’s going to be very difficult for the city to prevail in making a case my client should pay for overtime for a case ultimately dismissed by the state’s attorney.
“It’s ridiculous and a stretch to require him to do so.”
But the latest court filing contends even if Smollett did make a false report, there is no way the city can assert he would have known the city would investigate — and investigate it to the extent cops did.
“We contend the city is wrong,” Quinlan said of the city’s assertion that Smollett should have known the police would log nearly 2,000 hours in overtime trying to resolve the case. “ … The mere fact somebody filed a police report doesn’t presume the investigation will be done and certainly not to the extent of what the city is claiming.”
He added: “Smollett has no control over that.”
In the legal brief, obtained by Sneed, Smollett makes clear that he “disputes any and all assertions that he made a false statement and was not a victim of a crime.”
But even if he did, “The filing of a police report, in and of itself, does not necessitate a sprawling investigation nor does it, as a practical matter, usually result in an investigation as extensive as the one the CPD chose to undertake in this case,” the motion says.
It goes on to say the city “has failed to allege that Mr. Smollett was similarly ‘well aware’ that his statements to police would result in 1,836 hours of police overtime, or any other reasons why he should have known this would have been the case.”
That’s right. Because even though he wrote a check to pay his alleged attackers to “attack” him, Smollett assumed identity politics would sway public opinion in his favor and he’d grace national headlines as a victim, not as the accused.
For our extensive coverage of Smollett’s self-inflicted legal woes, see here.
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Comments
Chutzpah.
Juicy Smulée.
LOL
Juicy
Juicy
Juicy
Fraud!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZXoErL2124
Is he using Oberlin’s lawyers?
…because it’s racist to actually investigate when a black person claims they were the victim of a racist assault. And it’s doubly racist to keep investigating when it appears that the claim was a lie.
Send the bill to Chapelle because Dave certainly owned him the other night. I wonder if he will be the new spokesperson for Juicy Fruit.
And if the cops didn’t investigate, or investigate as he considered adequate, then he and his claque would have
SCREAMED
RACISM, RACISM, HOMOPHOBIA, RACISM
Just as the left demands that we “believe the woman”, we are also expected to “believe the black person”. The left’s mascots think they are above the law. But in truth such demands suggest that they are outlaw.
Problem is it works for them and a liberal media.
The con artist had it within his control to terminate the CPD investigation at any time by admitting he concocted the incident and filed a false report.
“… allegedly paying a couple of dudes to stage a hate crime.”
Serious question, not rhetorical, from a non-lawyer: At what point can we legitimately stop using the word “allegedly”?
I know that Smollett was not arrested or convicted of the offense, but it seems indisputable that he committed it.
News media make a fetish out of calling all crimes “alleged,” unless they’re allegedly committed by Trump supporters.
Not sure. Those kids in Oberlin are still allegedly shoplifters the last I checked.
No, they pleaded guilty and paid a fine.
Kim Foxx will just have to prosecute, to show there was substance to the charges. She never should have dropped the charges. It’s obvious to us out here that Smollett is guilty.
He thought he could foster diversity as a means to share responsibility. With his acquittal, there persists, perhaps progresses, an incentive for bigotry that undermines social stability.
There is more than a small difference between an acquittal and charges being dropped.
There is more than a small difference between an acquittal and charges being dropped.
But you have to admit he did his best to end black unemployment. LOL!
But only for French actors named Juicy!
LOL
And even with false allegations of rabid diversity (i.e. color judgment), with the intent to foster prejudice, corruption, and dysfunction, not even a “hate crime”? Well, isn’t that special, selective, opportunistic, politically congruent.
I’m just waiting to see if the Postmaster General/FBI are going to file federal charges for mail fraud. The $130,000 thousand that the Chicago Police want reimbursed should be peanuts, as to what the Feds can dish out.
Why is it taking the FBI so long to investigate this? As sloppy as Juicy was in planning the hoax MAGA attack (did you see the footage from his apartments security camera showing Juicy with the noose around his neck as he was leaving to go to Subway?) Hopefully there will be plenty of evidence of mail fraud. What I would love to see is proof of a connection between Juicy, Kamala Harris, and Spartacus in perpetrating a scam on the American people to set up the passage of their anti lynching bill. The timing is too perfect.
Because the FBI works for the Democrats and the Left. They are paid for by us, but do not work for us in the slightest.
Subotai Bahadur
You are so right, SB!
What reasonable citizen voluntarily files a police report in the hopes that its claims don’t get investigated?
Not the hope, but the assumption. And the answer is every single person who has ever filed a burglary report, a hit-and-run report, or pretty much any crime that is not newsworthy, did not cause serious injury, and would take more than 30 minutes to investigate. Had Smollett not been a celebrity, and had he not supplied a bias motivation for the supposed assault, he could reasonably have expected that the police would do little or nothing to find his anonymous attackers.
No, it’s a serious felony charge and a violent one. That is not a reasonable assumption, except in Milhouse world.
Burglary is a serious felony too, but everyone including you knows very well that the police never bother investigating burglary reports. Nobody ever expects them to.
Completely pathetic and despicable comment.
Are you seriously claiming that the police do investigate burglaries?! You know it’s not true. Everyone knows it. You’re just making a fool of yourself.
They do here. Somebody has to identify the bodies, file a report and call the bus. Seriously, I’ve had a cop show up at my back door investigating an alleged burglary at a non-existent address somewhere along my road frontage.
You think it’s foolish to expect to police to investigate crimes???
Who is the fool here???
That kind of thinking is just more proof that our civilization is near the end. Look at how all great societies ended, how those societies operated in their decline…you will see us.
It was a “heater case” on several levels, Smollet’s celebrity, the “hate crime” in a tourist district, “Maga Country”, etc. The CPD was under serious pressure, both from the pols and the press to solve this one, pronto.
While burglary is generally a felony, it’s not considered a “major crime”. So you’re highly unlikely to see a PD’s major case squad following up on it. Those PDs large enough to have dedicated burgarly units tend to staff them with the rookie detectives who are always chomping at the bit to move up to major crimes.
Also, most burglary victims don’t keep a manifest of their individual pieces of property, with serial numbers and original purchase receipts. If you can provide that information to the police, they can at least canvasse the local pawn shops and maybe recover some of your stuff.
The 130K dollars will be chump change compared to what his lawyers will wrack him with.
And let’s not forget the complete disappearance of an acting career. I see tending bar, at best, in his future.
Tending bar like Sandy the Bronx Squid?
Snark.
Then I see a congress critter career in Juicy’s future then.
What better training for it than bar tending since
Bar Tending is perhaps the #1 occupation with it comes to
bar keep employee money theft!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Everybody knew it was a hoax right away; the police department should have been the same, except they were playing it for some reason of their own. So he has a point.
It’s investigation theater.
Everyone suspected immediately that it was a hoax, and the police must have suspected it too, but they had to investigate it in case it was true, and he knew it.
It’s a waste of resources, even if true. Chicago has much more pressing problems. Add the probability its being false, and it’s idiotic to investigate. Just file the report in the file of uninvestigated reports and move on.
The legal industry in this country gets more embarrassing every day. Jesse Smollet is guilty beyond a shadow of doubt, pay the fine and go away Jesse, your 15 minutes are over. Embarrassing but over.
who was the catalyst for this entire sequence of events? damn jussie, why not consider yourself lucky as you actually got away with it?–pay the $130k as there’s no question YOU were the cause of this charade–consequences, boy–realize that’s one helluva lot of bj’s but you apparently have the mouth for it
Given the potential tie-ins to those with way more to lose, I am quite surprised that he wasn’t found hung in his jail cell. But, the day is young. Juicy has less upside to his case than Epstein did.