An Illinois appeals court has slapped down Jussie Smollett’s appeal against disorderly conduct.
Smollett was jailed for staging an anti-gay, racist hate crime on himself and filing a false police report in January 2019.
During the police probe into the incident, Chicago cops concluded that Smollett had hired brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo to carry out the crime.
Smollett was convicted on five counts of disorderly conduct, sentenced to 150 days in jail, 30 months felony probation and $120,106 in restitution to the City of Chicago and a $25,000 fine.
He only served six days in jail before he was released on March 16, 2022 when his lawyer’s filed an appeal.
Empire actor Jussie Smollett filed an appeal of the December 2021 conviction for staging an anti-gay, racist attack on himself and then lying to Chicago police about it
Brothers Abel and Ola Osunadairo, who were hired by the actor to attack him
Smollett was convicted of five counts of disorderly conduct for lying to police about being the victim of a racist, anti-gay attack
Now the Appellate Court of Cook County had denied the appeal Smollett may now be required to complete the rest of his sentence.
During the original sentencing hearing Smollett shouted at the judge that he was innocent, warning the judge that he was not suicidal and if he died in custody it was somebody else, and not him, who would have taken his life.
Smollett initially told Chicago police he had been accosted on a darkened street by two masked strangers.
According to his account of the attack, the assailants threw a noose around his neck and poured chemicals on him while yelling racist and homophobic slurs and expressing support for then-President Donald Trump.
The two assaulters were Nigerian brothers Abel and Ola Osundairo, who are black.
The brothers, who testified in court, told the jury Smollett hired them to fake the attack because he wanted to boost his celebrity profile.
Smollett later claimed that in the days before the stunt, when prosecutors said he and the brothers were rehearsing the attack, they were actually getting together to smoke marijuana.
Smollett shocked the court by claiming he ‘made out with’ and ‘masturbated’ with Abimbola Osundairo during a visit to a bathhouse.
Jussie Smollett was found guilty of orchestrating and reporting a false hate crime on himself
Jussie Smollett raises his fist to proclaim his innocence as he is escorted to jail at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse during his sentencing for staging an attack on himself in Chicago, 10 March 2022
Jussie Smollett poses for a Cook County jail booking photograph as he begins his sentence in Chicago, March 10, 2022
Nigerian brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundario recreated how they staged the attack on actor Jussie Smollett in January 2019
The actor told the jury he thought the brothers staged the attack on him to try to scare him into thinking he needed bodyguards, and to give them the job.
Offering their point of view in a segment for a FOX Nation docuseries on Smollett’s web of lies the brothers returned to the scene of the ‘crime’ and share how they gave him a ‘noogie’ and poured bleach on his shirt before they ran away in the darkness of night.
The brothers took cameras to the spot where they sat on a bench waiting in the cold for Smollett at 2am on January 29.
‘We had no phones because he did not want us to bring any phones,’ Abimbola said. ‘He said, “So we don’t lose them.” I don’t know if that’s really the reason, but you can deduce your own reason.’
He claimed Smollett told them to show up at exactly 2am, but ‘he was nowhere to be found, so we’re like “Damn, what do we do?”
‘We had no way of contacting him, he had no way of contacting us.’
At that point, his brother interjected to say that they were waiting for Smollett for about four minutes ‘but it felt like forever.’
‘Because it was cold as balls,’ Abimbola explained.
Smollett’s face is blurred but he’s seen holding the long white rope nose around his neck
Eventually, he said, he saw Smollett walking ‘out the corner of my eye,’ and the two sprang into action remarking ‘We gotta go get this Empire f******’ and ‘Let’s get that n*****.’
When they go to cross the street, Abimbola said, they said ‘Hey n*****’ to get his attention, ‘and then he turned around, looked at us and that’s when we started yelling the famous slurs he wanted us to yell.’
Among those slurs was ‘This is MAGA country.’
‘And then he said, “What did you say to me?” And that’s when I threw the first punch at him. I held the blow, of course, so I made it look real.
‘And then we started tussling, moving around and then I threw him to the ground,’ Abimbola continued, noting: ‘He wanted it to look like he fought back. That was very important to him.’
Abimbola said he ‘wanted it to look more real, so then I threw him to the ground. I used my knuckle to give him a nooggie,’ demonstrating how he balled his face and rotated around Smollett’s eye.
‘Why did I do that? To make it look like he had a scar , to give him a mark, to make it look real like he really did get his a** beat,’ he explained. ‘After I did that, I fake kicked him.’
That’s when Olabinjo said he ‘came around with the bleach — the infamous bleach n the hot sauce bottle, poured it on his shirt, then I finally put the rope around his face.
Considered the state’s star witnesses at the time, the brother’s both delivered in-depth testimonies that laid bare the plot, leading to the actor’s conviction in December 2021
‘I did not put it around his neck,’ he emphasized. ‘I just placed it on his face, and that’s when we took off.’
But when cops arrived at Smollett’s apartment 40 minutes after he made the call to police about a hate crime, he still had a white noose around his neck. He said he left it on to show the cops what happened as he also pointed to the bleach on his shirt.
But after just three days of probing the incident, cops began to hone in on the brothers – and subsequently suspected that Smollett’s hate crime claims were, in fact, bogus.
Video evidence from more than 55 sources would prove that narrative to be true, unmasking the brothers as the definite culprits.
At this point, due to conflicting accounts offered by Smollett, cops knew the incident was a hoax – but were then faced with the task with forcing it from the brothers’ mouths themselves.
Cops quickly encountered a road block after learning the pair were out of the country, but would only have to wait a few weeks before they would return.
They eventually were able to confront the brothers when they handed over their passports.
They were held in a Cook County detention cell for 47 hours before they cracked and owned up to taking part in Smollett’s strange plot for the first time – which they said the actor designed with the ultimate goal of being viewed as a hero for not only the LGBTQ community, but to black people as well.
In the aftermath, the brothers said they were dumbfounded by Smollett’s public remarks about the experience.
Speaking about how the actor consistently lied and tried to play innocent after the hoax, the brothers told Fox Nation: ‘Insane. That’s when I really saw a different side of Jussie. Like, dude, really? This is when I knew that this dude was like a super villain.’
‘I thought he was a good actor, but I also thought this guy was a fraud,’ said Amibola of Smollett’s continued attitude toward the incident, which has remained unchanged since his 2021 trial.
‘This guy is really just sitting her, lying to these people. Lying through his teeth, and not caring,’ he said, referencing how Smollett ‘even shed a tear’ during a now widely seen interview with ABC News in which he denied the attack was a hoax.
Calling the actor ‘crazy’ for his continued devotion to the ruse, Amibola admitted that he feels betrayed by Smollett for not embracing his guilt, and taking the fall as he and his brother were forced to do
‘I did feel betrayed by Jussie and what he had done. I didn’t know what to do – I wasn’t ready to say anything. Like, I was mute. And I didn’t want to say anything.’
They added that they felt Smollett just wanted to be ‘the poster child for activism,’ with Ambibola saying: ‘He wanted to be the hero for gay people, for black people.’
The two brothers ultimately testified against their one-time friend in court and were able to walk away from the incident with just two years’ probation and a small fine, after cooperating with police and unmasking the ruse.