Jussie Smollett indicted on 16 felony counts

A GRAND JURY IN Chicago indicted Empire actor Jussie Smollett on 16 felony counts related to making a false report that he was attacked by two men who shouted racial and homophobic slurs.

The Cook County grand jury indictment dated Thursday and made public on Friday gives details of the disorderly conduct charge against Smollett. It elaborates on the allegation that he falsely reported he was attacked on January 29 by two masked men who hurled racial and homophobic slurs at the black and openly gay actor, beat him, threw an unidentified liquid chemical on him and looped a rope tied like a noose around his neck.

The indictment – eight counts from what he told the officer who responded to the report of the attack and eight for what he later told a detective – comes a little more than two weeks after prosecutors announced one felony count of the same charge.

Chicago police initially investigated the incident as a possible hate crime but later said Smollett staged the attack, recruiting two brothers to carry it out, because he was unhappy with his pay on the Fox show.

An attorney for Smollett, Mark Geragos, called the indictment “prosecutorial overkill.” He said Smollett “adamantly maintains his innocence.”

“This redundant and vindictive indictment is nothing more than a desperate attempt to make headlines in order to distract from the internal investigation launched to investigate the outrageous leaking of false information by the Chicago Police Department,” Geragos said.

During the investigation of the incident, several Chicago media reported that there were doubts about Smollett’s account, quoting unnamed sources. Some local media have reported that the police department is investigating alleged leaks.

While it was not immediately clear why the grand jury indicted Smollett on 16 counts, it divides what prosecutors and police say the actor told the officer who responded to the initial call from what he said to the detective.

The second eight counts are more explosive because they include two things that helped propel the incident into an international sensation. The first is that by the time he talked to the detective, Smollett said he could see through the eye holes of one attacker’s mask that he was a white man. The two brothers who allegedly participated are black.

“He took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career,” Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, who is black, told reporters the day Smollett was initially charged. Johnson said Smollett paid the two brothers $3,500 to carry out the staged attack.

The indictment, written in the dry legal language, does not include new details.

POSTERS CLAIMING THAT late pop legend Michael Jackson was innocent of sexual abuse allegations have gone on display on London buses, after the documentary Leaving Neverland aired in Britain last week, the media reported on Saturday.

In the four-hour documentary directed by Dan Reed, which aired in a slightly shorter format in the UK, Wade Robson, 36, and James Safechuck, 41, have alleged that Jackson groomed and molested them as children, CNN reported.

Robson met the singer at age five, after winning a dance-alike concert in his native Australia, while Safechuck was eight when he appeared alongside Jackson in a 1986 Pepsi commercial.

The London ads show a black and white photo of Jackson’s face. One version has the word “Innocent” across his mouth and reads “Facts don’t lie. People do”.

The other displays the hashtag “#MJINNOCENT”.

Both versions direct viewers to the website mjinnocent. com, which lists purported evidence of the pop-star’s innocence.

Anika Kotecha, a lawyer who is one of the organisers of the campaign, told CNN that the posters were the work of a small Britain-based team.

“We’ve known for a long time that these allegations are nothing but lies and we wanted to get that message out to the general public,” she said.

Kotecha and other organisers used an agency to place the ads, although she told CNN that they liaised with government body Transport for London in the process.

The ads will be displayed into April, on a total of 60 buses, the lawyer added.

Ahead of the UK broadcast of Leaving Neverland, Jackson defenders protested outside the headquarters of British television network Channel 4, which aired the documentary.

After the film aired at the Sundance festival in January, Jackson’s family called it a “public lynching” and have filed a suit against HBO, which co-produced the documentary.