Jumping to a bad conclusion

Will Jussie’s backers admit they were wrong?

Police sources believe that, as many had suspected, “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett perpetrated an enormous hoax on the American public by staging a phony hate crime.

Now we’re waiting for apologies from the celebrities and top Democrats who not only expressed sympathy for the supposed victim of violent hate, but turned around and cited President Trump and his supporters as having somehow inspired the attack.

Which was itself pretty foolish, since much of his story seemed implausible from the start. For one thing, Smollett’s account of what took place in the frigid early-morning hours of Jan. 29 kept changing.

Smollett claimed he was set upon at approximately 2 a.m. on a freezing night by two white men who recognized him and began beating him while uttering anti-black and anti-gay slurs, as well as “this is MAGA country” — and also draped a rope around his neck.

Yet surveillance cameras showed there was at most a 60-second window for the attack, which is highly unlikely. He also waited 40 minutes before calling police, later claiming he didn’t want to further the stereotype of gay people being “weak.”

Moreover, he refused to hand over his cellphone (he said he’d been talking to his manager when the attack occurred), eventually turning over only “heavily redacted” phone records.

That’s a whole lot of red flags — especially considering the not-inconsiderable number of similar hoaxes, also widely publicized, perpetrated in recent years.

Yet Democratic presidential hopefuls jumped on the hysteria train.

As National Review’s Jim Geraghty notes, it’s one thing to be sympathetic to an apparent victim — and quite another to hold a large group of people, including the president of the United States, responsible without any factual basis.