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The Chicago police recently charged Empire actor Jussie Smollet with felony charges alleging that he staged a racist and homophobic attack on himself. This marked a significant shift in the trajectory of the investigation of Smollet’s account of the events the morning of January 29, 2019. The actor alleged that two assailants beat him, poured bleach on him, put a noose around his neck, berated him with racist and homophobic slurs, while yelling, “this is MAGA country,” an obvious reference to 46-1’s slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

Smollet is an openly gay Black actor on a popular television show, thus his story received widespread media attention and immediate condemnation from a who’s who list of celebrities, activists and politicians. On the heels of Smollet being charged by police, he was hit with a 16 count felony indictment by a grand jury for disorderly conduct and filing a false police report.

Given the astounding twist in the case, right wing pundits, Republican activists and Trump supporters are having a field day scolding the left and all who believed Smollet’s story for ‘jumping the gun’ and repudiating everything Trump and accusing the orange demagogue of inciting racist and homophobic hate and violence. Smollet’s attorneys Todd S. Pugh and Victor P. Henderson have come out in the actor’s defense releasing statements noting that he is “angered and devastated” by his arrest and stating, “Mr. Smollett is a young man of impeccable character and integrity who fiercely and solemnly maintains his innocence and feels betrayed by a system that apparently wants to skip due process and proceed directly to sentencing.” Read more…