Federal Judge Refuses to Dismiss Chicago Lawsuit Against Jussie Smollett
Smollett is actually arguing that it’s Chicago’s fault it spent so much money to investigate his staged attack.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall told actor Jussie Smollett the Chicago lawsuit against him “will be going forward.”
The city wants him to pay the $130,166 they wasted on his hoax. He claimed two men assaulted him with a noose and homophobic slurs.
Smollett’s case fell apart almost instantly. Evidence showed that he fabricated the attack, which led police to charge him “with disorderly conduct for allegedly lying to police.”
Shock went through Chicago when Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx “dismissed the 16-count indictment” with barely a peep.
From The Chicago Tribune:
Lawyers for Smollett argued in their motion that the actor could never have foreseen that Chicago police would investigate his claims so thoroughly — and therefore he shouldn’t be stuck with the $130,000 overtime bill.
In their 12-page motion, Smollett’s attorneys said police investigations are a “discretionary function” of law enforcement and that there was no proof the damages allegedly incurred by the city were directly related to Smollett’s report — later determined by police to be a hoax.
“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 CPD chose to undertake in this case,” Smollett attorney William Quinlan wrote.
Quinlan said Smollett’s report merely enabled “police and prosecutors to decide whether and how to investigate.”
Kendall retorted that “it isn’t unreasonable to think” the city would put in as much effort as they did when Smollett reported the alleged crime. She noted it made sense for it to become a priority “given his celebrity and the ‘volatile climate’ of the times.”
The police department echoed Kendall’s sentiments. From NBC Chicago:
The police department has said it only did what was necessary and that it conducted a potential hate crime investigation because Smollett alleged that two masked men hurled racist and homophobic insults at him, beat him and looped a noose around his neck.
“Whether it’s Chicago or any other U.S. city, when he reported a vicious hate crime it was going to be investigated at the highest level of vigor and detail,” said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. The investigation included canvassing the area for witnesses, dozens of interviews, scientific analysis of the rope as well as the liquid that Smollett said the men threw at him, and the collection of hours of surveillance video from cameras mounted on buildings, inside taxi cabs and from cameras along miles of city streets.
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A positive development.
Allegations of diversity, claims of violence, and projections of transphobia are the stuff that political myths are made of, social leverage is created and wielded, economies are shared and distorted, and persons… people are aborted… cancelled. Summary judgments, trials by press, and social justice. Witch hunts, warlock trials, and injustice.
What the really should do is charge him for the wasted effort of everyone investigating his faux crime not just the overtime.
You let this go and it will never end
And remember this crime ties back directly to Kamala Harris and
Corey Booker who were planning on making bank on it – imo, but facts align with that assessment also.
$130,166 does not sound excessive, to me.
A celebrity reports that he was attacked with racial insults, the story makes the international news, Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama, among others, chime in, and we are to expect Chicago’s Finest to sit on their thumbs?
I imagine the kicked-anthill effect would have been visible from space, with that much attention!
and the criminal charges should be taken up again. 130K is way too cheap for what he tried to do here. If people think they can get away with it for an affordable amount of money, others will want to try it.
Smollett had huge potential upside here. It would have put him in the national political spotlight, just when the Dems were (and still are) casting about for a presidential candidate. Blackish, gay, from Chi-town, well spoken, an actor … I think this was the plan.
Call me a cynic, but I somehow doubt that Chicago’s virulently anti-police black lesbian mayor is going to pursue charges against a black gay actor.
This thing was an obvious hoax from the start. Smollett claimed to have been assaulted by two MAGA hat wearing rednecks saying, “This is MAGA country” and using “racist” and “homophobic” slurs. Racist and homophobic in scare quotes because typically when leftists/media types (yes, that’s redundant) accuse conservatives of using “racist,” “homophobic,” or whatever “-ist” or “-phobe” language they don’t quote them directly. Because any normal person hearing what the accused actually said would realize it was simply a simple truth. So the leftists simply mischaracterize what their targets actually said.
It was something like -10dg when Smollet claimed to have been attacked. Trump voters have far to much sense to wander around in the wee hours of the morning in that kind of weather. And no Trump voter had ever heard of Smollett or his show, “Empire.” I’ve only heard about this idiot and that show since his hoax blew up in his face.
This guy’s massive ego gave the game away. He actually imagined he was a huge celebrity who had achieved such enormous national (if not international) fame that his name was a household word and all 320+ million Americans would recognize him on sight.
When outside of his tiny little niche viewership the vast majority of Americans couldn’t pick him out of a police line-up. And he desperately needs to be in a police line-up for this crap.
Unless someone can come up with a federal crime (shouldn’t be too hard since he sent a death threat letter through the mail to himself with ground up aspirin he claimed was anthrax) he won’t, unfortunately, be appearing in any police line-ups.
How does a mayor pursue charges?
I meant that as mayor she would do everything in her power to block the reinstatement of charges, should the special prosecutor recommend that, if the state decided to go ahead anyway she’d do everything in her power to prevent the city of Chicago form cooperating with the prosecution.
Since the Chicago PD is the entity that investigated the crime and holds the evidence that would make prosecuting Smollett difficult if not impossible.
Send his azz to prison….. hell I bet he would enjoy it
LOLGF, Jussie!
Hopefully Jussie isn’t paying his lawyers too much…what an absolutely stupid argument. A First Year law student should be ashamed to write something this idiotic.
I hope he’s draining his bank account paying those lawyers–for the same reason that I want maximum financial damage to Oberlin College.
I can see your point. I hope justice is done. It is ultimately about truth. If smollyay drains his bank account over the hoax he instigated, that’s along the lines of Karma. But we all have the presumption of innocence, and should not be rendered bankrupt in making the State prove us otherwise. That is “Lawfare.”
Are his lawyers gay blacks?
Somehow I doubt it. He wants to win his case, remember?
Didn’t Smollett do more than simply file a false police report? Didn’t his publicist set up interviews for him? Didn’t he go on TV talk shows with his false claims, fanning the false police report into a burning fire?
If all he did was to file the police report, this $130K bill might seem unreasonable, but if he made it into a “celebrity” issue, then the $130K isn’t excessive.
(I still have no idea who this “celebrity” is, but I don’t have access to whatever channel his show is on. I have no interest.)
“Lawyers for Smollett argued in their motion that the actor could never have foreseen that Chicago police would investigate his claims so thoroughly — and therefore he shouldn’t be stuck with the $130,000 overtime bill.”
What did Jesse foresee and when did he foresee it?
Seriously, he idiot is getting off cheap. Imagine the secondary costs if the cops had believed him and arrested a couple of MAGA guys who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Any thought of ruining someones life? How do you repay a person who has been falsely accused and deprived of life and liberty?
I hope he goes to jail for as long as his faux-perps would have gone if they’d been convicted of a racist hate crime.
We absolutely need to be able to strip convicted felons of their voting rights. This smollyay guy, if tried and convicted of a felony, should be forever barred from entering the Honored, Sacred place we know as the polling place/ballot box. He tried to smear a whole class of American citizens based on their political affiliation. The damage could have been incalculable. Stripping him of his right to directly participate in our political system is right and good.
We are able to. We, i.e. the Illinois legislature (whom else could you possibly mean?) is perfectly able to deny the franchise to convicted felons; it has chosen not to. Surely you didn’t mean that “we” should be forced to do so!
The concept of “hate crime” is liberal BS.
but if he’s going to try to use those laws, he should face the same punishment himself if proved to be doing it falsely. Against two people, so double.
I have always felt the punishments for framing somebody else in a crime are insufficient. The same sentence (max) should be on the table. This case gets more complicated because he framed an entire political group but not specific persons. Specific persons might go to jail, but guilty groups….
get permanent freedom seizing laws written against them.
No, it isn’t. Motive has been a legitimate factor in sentencing for as long as our criminal system has existed. Our laws have always treated the same crime differently depending on what motivated it. E.g. a crime committed for profit has always been treated more harshly than the exact same crime committed in a fit of passion. Hate crime laws do just that and no more.
Those outside the Chicago area may just know the gun violence, but the #1 enabler of those shootings is Kim Foxx. 30% or so of the recovered guns from crimes originated out of state. Foxx has not referred A SINGLE ONE of those weapons charges to the FBI or ATF. She regularly releases violent criminals with no charges “because it disproportionately affects people of color”. And between her and Mayor Lightfoot, they put every obstacle possible to police trying to solve crimes. Chicago and Illinois have “strict” gun laws, but you can’t even know their effectiveness because Foxx refuses to enforce them.
The Rwandan form of government imported to the U.S.
I follow the Second City Cop blog to keep track of the insanity.
http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/
The problem isn’t just Foxx. Chicago has some awful judges who are apparently in a competition with Foxx to see who can enable and affirm the most disfunction.
It’s important to keep track of the insanity because it will eventually make its way to places like Texas as Kali and Illinois residents seek lower taxes. But have not a clue who or what ruined their former states and they bring their STDs with them. And infect their new locations.
A Dallas jury just gave sole custody to a rabid leftard woman who is forcing a seven year old boy to transition to a transgirl. The father is trying to stop it and rightfully points out that forcing a seven year old boy to become a girl against his will so mom can make a fashion statement is a monstrous form of child abuse. But this is a Dallas jury. Texans refer to the city as Dallas, California. So the dad lost shared custody of the child, and unbelievably may be forced not only to pay for the “transition” therapy but may also be forced to “affirm” the boy’s forcibly imposed new gender identity by referring to the boy as a girl even when the boy is not present, such as a case when talking about the boy in front of anyone who knows the child as a girl.
Outside of Dallas, Austin, and maybe Houston I can’t imagine any jury going along with this crap. I came to Texas to man (“non-gender inclusive” word chosen for a reason, snowflakes) the ramparts of the Alamo. Not to bring this idiocy with me. Channeling Davy Crockett as I crossed the border into Arizona on my permanent move out of Kali I said, “Y’all can go to hell and I will go to Texas.”
Chicago seems like a bizarro place – DAs who don’t prosecute crime, gun violence galore, teachers who strike every year, mayors who kowtow to every union, Saul Alinsky communism, a Taj Mahal Obama library- the list is endless. Time to move.
Has Jussie offered to share a room with Gavin Newsome? They would make a nice couple.
When your client has the law on their side; pound the law.
When your client has the facts; pound the facts.
When your client has neither; pound the table.
That’s what I learned at law school, that and not liking most attorneys very much.
Still I am not sure why anyone is upset by his attorneys argument. What else can they do? Their client hasn’t given them much to work with. They have a job to do and, thanks to their client, not many arrows in their quiver.
I don’t blame the lawyers. Moreover, I’d bet Smollett actually believes it. He didn’t expect the CPD to actually investigate his claim but instead he expected his claim to go unchallenged. Just like the leftist trop #BelieveAllWomen he was operating on the assumption that there was a rule in effect that says #BelieveAllHateCrimeClaimsFloatedByGayActorsOfColor.
In the victimhood olympics he’s a top-tier competitor.
As an attorney, you decline to take a case when it is this riddled with inconsistencies, inanities, and idiocy.
So your argument is that folks who screw up and present inconsistent stories that seem idiotic or inane to the larger society should be denied services by attorneys?
That seems both naive and extreme. Naive because most criminal defendants find themselves presenting all those problems. Extreme in that you don’t think those who present those problems are worthy of representation. That seems like a dangerous path to me.
Let’s be careful here, your inane, idiotic and inconsistent hypothetical client just might in the future turn out to be a innocent but not well spoken gun owner in some leftest community whose ex-wife has a grudge. Shouldn’t this guy have an attorney to help him recover his property (firearms) that were seized based on his wife’s statement? I hope that isn’t what you are arguing for.
That face.
So what’s going to happen to Kim Foxx??? Preferably firing her so she may go into acting with her hero, Jussie Smollett.