Actor Jussie Smollett faces six new charges

Jussie Smollet, the former Empire actor, has been indicted in Illinois on 6 counts of lying to the police after an alleged staged attack on himself. Smollet who is black and gay said that he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack in Chicago in January 2019 by two masked white men wearing MAGA hats.
The actor said that he was punched in the face, had an “unknown chemical liquid” poured on him and had a rope wrapped around his neck while the attackers talked about MAGA (Make American Great Again). While the cast of the Empire and many sent tweets of support for the actor, the police weren’t convinced and arrested Smollett in February 2019 saying that he paid two brothers to attack him as a way to promote his career and get a salary increase. The charges were then dropped in March 2019 despite the Chicago Police and the city’s mayor belief that he was guilty.

Smollet is still under investigation and will appear in court on the 24th of this February after being charged with “making four separate false reports to Chicago Police Department officers related to his false claims that he was the victim of a hate crime, knowing that he was not the victim of a crime” and in a civil suit asking for $130,000 for making police work overtime.