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(NewsNation) — Former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett found himself in the middle of an investigatory role reversal in 2019, shifting from the alleged victim of a reported racist and anti-gay attack outside his Chicago apartment to becoming the prime suspect in a criminal probe alleging Smollett concocted the entire episode.
What followed over the next six years became a scandalous legal battle filled with twists and turns set in a Midwestern metropolis that many suggest is the best news town in America.
“The people are real, the stories are real, and every possible confluence of events and news takes place,” WGN-TV investigative reporter Ben Bradley says. “But this story, this was not the Chicago that we all know.”
NewsNation learned never-before-heard details of how the investigation turned from looking at Smollett as a victim to looking at him as a suspect.
Jussie Smollett says he was victim of hate crime
Smollett — one of the central characters, Jamal Lyons, in “Empire” — sought treatment at Northwestern University Hospital for injuries he said he sustained when he was jumped by two men. Smollett alleged his attackers placed a noose around his neck and doused him with bleach in what police investigated as a racially charged attack and was subsequently worked on by dozens of Chicago Police Department detectives.
Like the character he portrayed in “Empire,” Smollett identifies as gay.
“Diversity should not be a fad or a hashtag,” Smollett said in an interview as the popularity of “Empire” began to blossom. “It should be something that we represent because, as artists, we are supposed to tell the truth and show the world in a very truthful way.”
However, the truthful way that Smollett referenced would soon come into question.
On a January overnight in 2019, Smollett’s manager called 911 and told the dispatcher that he worked with an artist whom he didn’t want to name. Smollett’s agent said that while the actor was leaving a downtown Chicago Subway restaurant, “somebody jumped him or something like that.”
“I just want to report it and make sure he is alright,” the agent told the dispatcher.
The dispatcher asked if the victim in question needed an ambulance.
“I think he’s startled,” the caller stated. “It’s pretty weird, ma’am, and I’m scared. See, they put a noose around his neck.”
Then-Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said he received word of the alleged attack in a 4 a.m. phone call. Chicago Police news director Anthony Guglielmi provided his boss with details of the alleged attack, to which Johnson said directed investigators to put together everything that they had and to prepare to brief the police superintendent within a matter of hours.
“I hear that something happens to this young man, you know, who was very popular because of the TV show,” Johnson said, “And I was pissed.”
Investigators showed up at Smollett’s apartment, where they were met by the actor’s manager, Frank Gatson. Gatson told police officers that his client’s pride was affected, but that Smollett, who was virtually an unknown before “Empire,” didn’t want his status as a celebrity “to be a big deal.”
Smollett declined to come downstairs to meet officers on the street, insisting that instead, they come to his apartment. When officers arrived, the actor still had a noose around his neck. When asked why he hadn’t taken it off, Smollett replied, “I just wanted y’all to see it.”
Despite Smollett’s manager telling police that the actor did not want his celebrity status to become an issue, Bradley, the WGN television investigative reporter, said that the story of the alleged attack “spread like wildfire.”
Suddenly, Bradley said, “A B-list, little-known actor on a Fox show suddenly had his face everywhere.”
Chicago top cop: How Jussie Smollett investigation turned
Details of the attack, which happened amid a January polar vortex, were immediately met with skepticism, Bradley says.
“If you’re two guys who decide, okay, I’m going to beat up a Black guy, and you’re going to have a piece of rope with me to tie a noose around his neck, you’re probably not going to do that in downtown Chicago, steps away from Michigan Avenue,” Bradley says.
Gloria Rodriguez, an attorney representing the two brothers accused of attacking Smollett, went to the scene of the alleged attack and spent a few hours in the area looking for cameras that may have captured the incident. To her, the actor’s claims didn’t make sense. Johnson, the Chicago Police superintendent, concurred.
Given the business of the intersection and the fact that the night’s dangerous weather conditions would have anyone on the street completely bundled up, Johnson couldn’t imagine that anyone would be able to identify the television actor.
“Would they know that’s Jussie Smollett?” Johnson said.
Within hours of the report being made, Johnson concluded that Smollett had likely made the attack up.
“One thing I know about victims of crimes like that, once they get free, especially if you have a noose around your neck, they’re looking for the police,” Johnson said.
Other parts of the investigation also gave Johnson and Chicago police pause. In the meeting with officers in his apartment after the alleged attack, Johnson said that Smollett “started getting antsy with us” when detectives asked the actor for his cellphone. Smollett said he feared that surrendering his phone could interfere with his privacy as well as the numbers of fellow celebrities found stored in his phone.
Instead of giving police his phone, Smollett offered investigators a heavily redacted phone bill. That too made the police superintendent suspicious.
“We already had some kind of inkling that things might not be what they looked like,” Johnson said.
The other “tell” that police suggested that something might be amiss took place when a letter was sent to the Chicago studio where “Empire” was being filmed. Bradley said that the letter included letters that had been cut out of magazines and a handwritten-addressed envelope that included shaky lettering. Smollett reported to police that the letter had been sent.
A week later, the alleged attack took place. Bradley said that he soon received a tip informing him that the two brothers being questioned in the attack were Black. Bradley called the moment the instant when the “lie fell apart for me.”
Johnson sensed a pivotal moment as well.
“I knew at that point we could get to the bottom of it,” he said.
Charges against Jussie Smollett dropped
After investigators determined that Smollett had fabricated the alleged incident, the actor was charged with 16 counts of disorderly conduct by then-Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
Yet just weeks later, in a stunning decision that Johnson and then Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called a “whitewash of justice,” Foxx dismissed all 16 counts.
In a news conference, Smollett thanked family and friends as well as Chicago residents who supported and prayed for the actor and had “shown him so much love.” Smollett said he had been “truthful and consistent on every single level” since the start of the investigation.
“I would not be my mother’s son if I was capable of one drop of what I have been accused of,” Smollett said.
The actor’s comments, however, did not sit well with Johnson, the police superintendent.
“You don’t bring your mother to invoke her name into something like that,” Johnson said. “Especially when you are 100% guilty of what we’re saying you are.”
Johnson said that his department stood by its investigation while a judge in the case agreed to seal the case after Smollett reached a deal with prosecutors that included him forfeiting his $10,000 bond and performing community service in exchange for the 16 counts against him being dropped.
However, Bradley, the WGN reporter, said that the deal reached between the two sides did not include an admission of guilt on the part of Smollett. However, in reviewing the case, Joseph Magats, the first assistant state’s attorney, said that prosecutors considered Smollett’s lack of a criminal background and determined that the agreement was a “just outcome.”
Gloria Rodriguez, the attorney representing the two brothers who were accused of the attack, called the agreement “a sweetheart deal that has absolutely no precedent in Cook County.”
Foxx, the county state’s attorney, disagreed.
“This is not an ‘us against them,’” she said. “This is all of us to fix a criminal justice system that sees the potential in all.”
Jussie Smollett’s settlement with Chicago
After a special prosecutor was instructed to reopen the case against Smollett, the actor was indicted by a grand jury on six counts of felony disturbing the peace.
A jury found him guilty on five counts, and Smollett was sentenced to 150 days in jail and was ordered to pay more than $120,000 in restitution to cover the cost of the police department’s investigation. He was also ordered to pay a $25,000 fine. However, in late 2024, the Illinois Supreme Court unanimously ruled to overturn the conviction, finding that the agreement Smollett reached with Foxx’s office should have prevented a special prosecutor from reopening the case.
In May, the city of Chicago announced it had settled a 2019 lawsuit against Smollett. Full details of the settlement were not released, but Smollett agreed to make a $50,000 charitable donation to a local organization.
While the city called the agreement “a fair, constructive and conclusive resolution” that brought closure to the six-year scandal, Smollett expressed that what he called a “false narrative” created by Chicago city officials has left a “stain on my character.”
“Those officials wanted my money and wanted my confession for something I did not do,” Smollett said in the statement. “Today it should be clear …. they have received neither.”