Chicago grand jury returns felony indictment after Empire actor said he was victim of hate crime

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A grand jury in Chicago has returned a 16-count felony indictment against television actor Jussie Smollett, accusing him of filing a false police report when he claimed he was the victim of a hate-crime assault by supporters of Donald Trump, local media reported on Friday, citing court records.

The Empire actor was previously charged in a criminal complaint with felony disorderly conduct, involving lying to police in relation to a supposed racist and homophobic attack in downtown Chicago on 29 January.

“Jussie Smollett knew that at the time … there was no reasonable ground for believing that such offenses had been committed,” according to the indictment, CBS Chicago said in a report on Friday afternoon.

From hate crime to hoax? How Jussie Smollett's strange story unravelled Read more

The actor, who is openly gay and best known for his role as the gay character Jamal Lyon on the Fox TV show, prompted widespread shock and concern when it emerged he had reported being attacked while walking home in the early hours. He told police two masked men – one of them wearing a red Make America Great Again hat – shouted racist and homophobic slurs as they beat him, put a noose around his neck, and doused him with a chemical.

Police said Smollett had paid those two men, Ola and Abel Osundairo, to stage the attack.

Smollett’s attorney, Mark Geragos, criticised the indictment in a statement as “redundant and vindictive,” adding that his client “adamantly maintains his innocence even if law enforcement has robbed him of that presumption.”

Geragos also said that levelling charges in an indictment spares prosecutors the need to submit evidence and witnesses to defence cross-examination in a preliminary hearing, where a judge decides if sufficient cause exists for the case to proceed to trial.

At the time he was initially charged two weeks ago, Chicago police officer Eddie Johnson said Smollett had paid two brothers $3,500 to stage an assault on him in a hoax orchestrated to somehow further his acting career.

Questions about Smollett’s potential role in the alleged attack started with reports that he had not fully cooperated with police, and word that detectives in a city full of surveillance cameras could not find video of the attack.

Police looked through hours of video surveillance from the area but found no footage of any attack.

The actor told Good Morning America he had been unable to give detectives a good description of his assailants as their faces were obscured. “You have to understand it’s Chicago in winter – people can wear ski masks and nobody’s going to question that,” he said.

Police said after Smollett was arrested last month that they believed he staged the attack because he was “dissatisfied with his salary” on Empire and was trying to draw attention to his plight.