Jussie Smollett, the former Empire actor who was dropped by the show after his hoax racist and homophobic attack allegations, has been cleared by a court of any wrongdoing, and specifically of trying to incite a race war between black people and white people.
Smollett, 36, had told the Chicago police department that two white men had attacked him, but this turned out to be two black men that Smollett, himself, had hired to do the 'beating up'.
Prosecutors today, however, have dropped all charges against the pathological liar, for reasons as yet undisclosed. The mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, denounced the decision as a'"whitewash of justice", and said that Smollett had fabricated a hate crime all in the name of self-promotion.
Chicago police Supt Eddie Johnson said:
"At the end of the day it was Mr Smollett who committed this hoax. Period."
Smollett's attorneys, Tina Glandian and Patricia Brown Holmes, said in a statement their client's record "has been wiped clean", suggesting that there was something that he'd done that needed to be wiped clean.
First Assistant State's Attorney Joseph Magats made a statement saying that the decision was not an exoneration of Smollett:
"We stand behind the investigation, we stand behind the decision to charge him. The fact that Smollett feels that we have exonerated him, we have not. I can’t make it any clearer than that."
