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Al Sharpton, Civil Rights Activists Say Jussie Smollett Should be Arrested if Attack Was Fake

Zachary Stieber
By Zachary Stieber
February 18, 2019US News
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Al Sharpton, Civil Rights Activists Say Jussie Smollett Should be Arrested if Attack Was Fake
Jussie Smollett attends Espolòn Celebrates Day of the Dead at Academy Nightclub in Hollywood, Calif., on Nov. 1, 2018. (Tasia Wells/Getty Images for Espolòn)

Some civil rights activists have said that Jussie Smollett should be arrested and face consequences if he faked a hate crime attack last month in Chicago.

Smollett, an actor on the television show “Empire,” claimed he was attacked on Jan. 29 at 2 a.m. in freezing temperatures by two white men who hurled slurs at him while wrapping a rope around his neck and dousing him with bleach.

But reports over the weekend indicated that two Nigerian brothers appeared to be the assailants and that the brothers told detectives they were paid by Smollett to stage the attack.

Al Sharpton was among the civil rights activists who said Smollett should face legal consequences if he was involved in staging the alleged attack.

“If it is found that Smollett and these gentlemen did in some way perpetrate something that is not true, they ought to face accountability to the maximum,” he said on MSNBC on Feb. 17.

Najee Ali, a Los Angeles-based civil rights activist and director of Project Islamic HOPE, held a press conference in the city on Sunday and said he thinks Smollett is lying about being a victim.

“Jussie Smollett must be brought to justice for lying,” he told reporters, reported ABC 7.

He said that the alleged lie was an injustice to real victims.

“We have many members of the black community and the LGBTQ community who have been the victims of hate crimes. So for Smollett to say that he was a victim of racism and hate crimes—and we believe that is a lie—certainly is an injustice to those true victims of racism and hate crimes,” he said.

Gepostet von Najee Ali am Sonntag, 17. Februar 2019

Many actors, actresses, directors, activists, reporters, and analysts were among the slew of people who initially believed the attack was real and denounced supporters of President Donald Trump and Trump himself after learning that Trump supporters were allegedly behind the attack.

Some refused to retract or change their stance in light of the new information, saying it was too early to do so. Others even said it didn’t matter whether Smollett was lying or telling the truth.

“Despite the inconsistencies, I can’t blindly believe Chicago PD. The department that covered up shooting Laquan McDonald over a dozen times? That operated an off-site torture facility? That one? I’ll wait. Whatever the outcome, this won’t stop me from believing others. It can’t,” director Ava DuVernay, who directed “Selma” among other movies, wrote on Twitter.

She was referring to how Chicago Police Department officer Jason Van Dyke shot McDonald, 17, in 2014 after a witness reported the teenager was breaking into cars. Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder.

In a sampling of extreme rhetoric after the reported attack, actor Billy Eichner wrote on Twitter: “I want Trump and all MAGA lunatics to burn in Hell.”

Eichner has not apologized or retracted his statement.

Parallels were drawn by many between the reaction to the alleged Smollett attack and the reaction of alleged racism shown by Covington Catholic high school students. Both incidents drew widespread condemnation from a host of media and non-media pundits, while more evidence emerged later that appeared to change the story completely.

“The Covington Kids and Jussie Smollett stories are the same. The media chose to believe the narrative that was most damaging to Trump supporters, even in the absence of facts or logic. This is why there is animus towards the media and why #fakenews resonates,” wrote Lisa Boothe, a Fox News contributor on Twitter.

“When we see the same reporters instantaneously believe the smear of Covington Catholic, and then instantaneously believe Jussie Smollett’s far-fetched story, and then the media establishment decide the story is conservatives pouncing, it can breed distrust in the media,” added Tim Carney, a Washington Examiner opinion editor.

After a short video clip appeared of the Covington students interacting with Native American activists in Washington, Hollywood producer Jack Morrissey took to Twitter to post a video showing people wearing “MAGA” hats being shoved into a woodchipper, which spewed out blood from the other end. “#MAGAkids go screaming, hats first, into the woodchipper,” Morrissey wrote.

He later took down the video and apologized.

A lawyer for one of the Covington students has sent letters to more than 50 people and companies in the wake of the libel, planning to sue some of them.

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