Some important people have been meddling in this case. Foxx recused herself a few weeks ago. Definitely the right thing to do.
It may be nothing. But it’s troubling to learn that the former first lady’s chief of staff was making phone calls on behalf of the family. The Smollett family has powerful friends.
It’s a weird day when I’m agreeing with David Axelrod:
If he actually gets his ass kicked now, he’ll be like the boy who cried “Wolf”. That would be ironic.
My jaw dropped when I read this part of Smollett’s statement: “We look forward to bringing the real perpetrators to justice.”
Really?? You’re taking a page out of the O.J. playbook??
“Unless some better explanation surfaces, here’s the lesson of this weird turn in the Smollett case:
You can contrive a hate crime, make it a national news, get caught and-if you are a well-connected celebrity-get off for $10K and have your record expunged and files sealed”
It’s somehow news that well-connected celebrities get different treatment than others?
Next you’ll be telling me rich people have different rules too!
I guess this is a case of Junk Juss-tice (stolen from this morning’s NY Post)
From last nights Colbert:
“I have a dream that one day, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will hire the very best publicists to leverage their social media profile, escape charges and then make a big comeback on The Masked Singer.”
This was from Dr. King’s other speech.
I’ll bet you’re right. If I was a betting man, I’d put my money on “there’s a problem with the admissibility or consistency of the brothers’ testimonies and they realized there’s a good chance that it could either cause a public scandal around the CPD or a loss of the case if the thread got pulled.”
The part of me that watches too many procedurals wants it to be that the brothers will admit on the stand that they only “confessed” after being threatened with deportation and were told that they could stay in the US as long as they said Jussie planned it. But life is less interesting, most of the time.
I’m most confused by how he managed to insure it got sealed? What’s in there that it can’t be made public? Surely the public has an interest in the outcome here, as it could mean prosecutors or police over reacted! In a case such as this, if he’s innocent especially why would he want it sealed?
This is fairly standard for all “journalism” today. Everytime I read any movie news article about Tom Cruise or John Travolta it always makes an unrelated reference to Scientology, if I read anything about an upcoming movie with James Woods it refers to him as an “Outspoken Conservative”. The standard now is to put an aside remark in any article that involves anyone that has anything “controversial” about them.
Isn’t the problem in cases like this always going to be a matter of he said/they said? Two guys beat him up. Later they said he paid them to do it. He said he did no such thing.
There are apparently checks that he gave them, but it also appears that these were for services that they did, in fact, provide him earlier.
He initially said he didn’t know who it was that attacked him, but “I didn’t recognize them at the time they were beating me down in the middle of the night” is certainly plausible.
I can certainly think he arranged it, but I don’t see any way based on what I’ve seen that it would pass any sort of reasonable doubt muster.
You would lose that bet. If that was the case there was no reason why the prosecutor wouldn’t have said that even if he did it in a roundabout way. Instead he gave some bullshit reason about how he thinks guilty guy shouldn’t be prosecuted because he’s non-violent. There is no reason why a prosecutor couldn’t say we are not going forward because we are not confident in the evidence. I’ve seen that many times.
When the family has direct ties To a former president like working for the campaign, introducing him at rallies, pictures of the defendant yukking it up with the First Lady, it’s a little more than tangential. The chief of staff for the first lady attempted to use her influence on the head prosecutor about the case. Stories about the suspect being friends with the first lady are then very relevant.
Well now we only have his word for it since it’s sealed, but the police commissioner stated they didn’t even give the grand jury all of the evidence. He seems to think it was a lot more than that and pretty open and shut. Even the sacrificial lamb the prosecutor put out in front of the camera says that he is guilty.
I don’t think he’s innocent, but I don’t agree with your reasoning. A lot of innocent people would forfeit a $10,000 bond to avoid going to trial for felony charges. I would. The lawyers would cost far more than that even for a very short trial.
So can I pay $10,000 and get a “Get out of jail free” card?
The Chicago Police just released their files on the case. It doesn’t contain the grand jury testimony of course.
How many former Presidents do you know?
Link?
Prosecutor on dropped Jussie Smollett charges: ‘I do not believe he is innocent’
That is some industrial-grade bullshit there.
The internet? Google? It’s on every major news site.