Another round of Jussie Smollett headlines, speculation and analysis has commenced with renewed intensity.
The Chicago Police Department has released hundreds of hours of videos and thousands of documents related to the alleged homophobic and racist beatdown of Smollett in late January 2019.
The timing of the release is not lost on observers. The Chicago PD released tapes of Smollett’s 911 call in early June. This comes just days after a special prosecutor was appointed to look into “irregularities” in how the case was originally handled by the previous prosecutor, Kim Foxx, according to the Chicago Tribune.
In the video obtained by the likes of CNN and USA Today, viewers can see the Chicago law enforcement officers as they converse with the “Empire” actor, 37, in his plush Chicago condo after the alleged beatdown. Approximately 40 minutes after the supposed incident went down, officers noticed that Smollett kept the white noose around his neck.
“Do you want to take it off or anything?” an officer asks the Empire actor.
“Yeah,” Smollett says. “I do. I just wanted y’all to see it.”
Smollett, 37, also can be heard telling the CPD that the perpetrators of his pummelling were “probably Caucasian” because of the “Make America Great Again” and homophobic comments they made. He then told the officer that they poured a corrosive liquid substance on him.
“There’s bleach on me,” Smollett said in a more extended video. “They poured bleach on me.”
CNN host Wolf Blitzer analyzed part of the video with national correspondent Ryan Young, who said the Chicago PD had problems with Smollett’s version of the story from the very beginning.
“One of the things they wanted to talk about was that it looked like a very new rope. It looked like they had just pulled it out of the package,” Young said, adding that the CPD wondered why someone would use a brand new rope to wrap around Smollett’s neck.
As rolling out previously reported, the Cook County (Chicago) State’s Attorney’s Kim Foxx initially charged Smollett with 16 felonies for allegedly staging a hoax beatdown. But weeks later, Foxx dropped all the charges, enraging many of the populace, politicians and public figures.
Moreover, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanual railed against Smollett during a public tirade after the charges were dropped. He later announced a $130K lawsuit against Smollett as legal recourse to recoup the many police man hours that were spent investigating the case.
Check out snippets of the video the Chicago PD released on CNN and CBS Chicago:
