Smollett tells the story of walking down the street in sub-zero temperatures and being attacked by two men wearing MAGA hats and screaming racial and homophobic slurs at him. Was this a hate crime?

Maybe it was. And then, maybe he wasn’t attacked at all.

The incident occurred in Chicago, a city torn by racial strife and massive distrust of the police. John Ziegler of Mediaite writes of how the investigation is unfolding:

Among other things, the police have made it very clear they have not yet found any proof of an attack, despite having almost all of Smollett’s movements on surveillance video. They have disclosed that Smollett would not give over his cell phone to verify his timeline of events. They even published photos of “persons of interest” that they had to know were going to be universally mocked for being obviously irrelevant. In my view, none of those important revelations would have been made public in the way that they were, unless there was extreme suspicion within the police force that Smollett’s story was not fully accurate. By extension, media figures would not be being told by their police sources, as I have been told is currently happening both routinely and with vigor, that the authorities are acting on the assumption that they will never find any evidence to fully substantiate Smollett’s story. This isn’t just happening via idle speculation either, the police are doing so with great specificity, even including an alternative theory for what really happened (current attempts to find the origin of the rope found around Smollett’s neck long after the event was over are believed to be the most likely game-changer, if there ever is one in this case).

In truth, the Chicago police are terrified of even hinting they doubt Smollett’s story. There is no major city in the U.S. where the cops are more distrusted by blacks than in Chicago. The police risk a riot if they let it be known they think Smollett is trying to hoax them.

The media — also massively distrusted by blacks in the city for supposedly always placing them in a bad light — is tiptoeing around the hoax story.