Pair reverse course on Smollett case cooperation
CHICAGO — Two brothers who admitted helping actor Jussie Smollett stage a racist and homophobic attack in Chicago last year are willing again to help in the case after initially saying they were done cooperating with prosecutors, their attorney said Thursday.
Attorney Gloria Schmidt Rodriguez said in a statement that Abimbola (Abel) and Olabinjo (Ola) Osundairo changed their minds after a 9 mm handgun that was seized during a search of their home last year was located after it went missing.
“Abel and Ola will recommence their cooperation in the Smollett case now that the handgun has been produced by the Special Prosecutor’s Office,” Schmidt Rodriguez wrote, referring to special prosecutor Dan Webb, who is handling the case. The two, she wrote in a separate letter to Webb, “stand ready to testify at trial.”
The about-face by the brothers came hours after media outlets reported that the brothers at the center of the case against the actor were, according to their lawyer, finished cooperating because of the missing gun and their feeling that the police department’s lawyers were treating them like suspects.
One legal expert called that threat hollow from the outset because the brothers already had testified before a grand jury, meaning that if they stood firm, prosecutors could read that testimony in court.
The strange story has taken a host of unexpected turns since January 2019, when Smollett, a Black and openly gay actor who worked on the TV show “Empire,” reported to police that two masked men had approached him in downtown Chicago, made racist and homophobic insults, beat him and looped a noose around his neck before fleeing.