The city of Chicago embraced Jussie Smollett not only an actor, but for himself, and he turned that around and tried to "self-promote himself" through hate crime laws and has "no sense of remorse," Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday.
"You have the state's attorney's office saying he's not exonerated," Emanuel told ABC News' "Good Morning America," speaking out after the Cook County prosecutor's office announced Tuesday that charges accusing the "Empire" star of staging a phony hate crime charges were dismissed. "He's saying he's innocent, and his words aren't true. They better get their story straight. This is making a fool of all of us."
Smollett not only abused the city, said the mayor, but "actually committed a crime here and lied about something. The grand jury indicted him when only seeing a portion of the evidence and he said he wanted to get his name clear. This is what I want for him. Let's get to the bottom of this."
Emanuel noted that all the documents in the case have been sealed, and he wants everything that the city's police department gathered to be released.
"How did all of a sudden this reverse out of nowhere like a bolt of lightning hit?" said Emanuel, accusing Smollett of using hate crime laws to "self-promote" himself.
He added that he thinks, like "everybody" in Chicago, that because Smollett is an actor and a person of influence, he got special treatment.
The state attorney's office is standing by the city police department's work, Emanuel pointed out, and "none of this adds up."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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