Jussie Smollett, a star of the Fox television show
Empire, was allegedly attacked by two people outside a Chicago Subway restaurant at 2 a.m. Tuesday.
According to Chicago police, Smollett claimed the assault was carried out by two assailants who yelled out "racial and homophobic slurs" and then hit him in the face before pouring "an unknown chemical substance" on him. At some point during the incident a rope was wrapped around Smollett's neck. Smollett said that after the attack the culprits fled the scene.
The celebrity gossip rag TMZ — mentioned above as holding a "green" rating on the fake fake news "watchdog" Newsguard — reported that before the attack Smollett said he heard someone yell, "Aren't you that $#@! ‘Empire' $#@!," though TMZ used the PC version and inserted asterisks for some of the letters in order to not offend the snowflakes. TMZ also alleged the assailants were white men who yelled "This is MAGA country" as they left the scene — MAGA being code word for Trump supporters using his acronym for Make America Great Again.
But police say there was no report of anyone mentioning the word "MAGA" in initial interviews with Smollett, and the race and sex of the assailants couldn't be determined because they wore ski masks and their hands were covered. Smollett later related the MAGA comments in follow-up interviews after the TMZ story was published. Subsequent reports attribute allegations of the MAGA comment to Smollett's agent, who allegedly heard them while talking to Smollett over the phone as the attack began. But Smollett has so far refused to give his phone to police to check this claim, and police have not yet subpoenaed phone logs.
Police released a later statement claiming to have viewed hundreds of hours of footage from video surveillance cameras and have not yet found any that shows the attack. They have found footage with two people walking in the area near the incident at around the time it occurred, and they are seeking them as "persons of interest."
Police say that when they arrived to take Smollett's statement 45 minutes after the attack, he asked them to turn off their body cameras and was reluctant to talk to them. The rope was still around his neck.
This story smelled fishy out of the gate and gets more rank with each passing hour.
But TMZ is a green-rated news site. Riiiight!
-- Jay Baker