Boston Herald

Concocting fake hate crimes a criminal act

- Adriana COHEN Adriana Cohen is a nationally syndicated columnist, Herald Radio host and tv commentato­r. See adrianacoh­en.com

The lengths Democrats will go these days to try to paint the president and his supporters as racist, violent or homophobic is beyond sociopath — it’s criminal.

Take outspoken Trump critic and openly gay TV actor Jussie Smollett. Last month, the “Empire” actor recounted a hard-to-believe hate crime alleging he was attacked by two white men on a city street in Chicago at 2 a.m. The black actor claimed the white men assaulted him, put a rope around his neck and threw bleach on him while hurling racist and homophobic epithets — and saying “This is MAGA country.”

Instead of waiting for the police to investigat­e the wild tale, many in the media, top Democratic lawmakers and 2020 presidenti­al candidates, including Elizabeth Warren, wasted no time rushing to his defense.

Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris both compared the alleged attack to a “modern-day lynching,” while Bernie Sanders called it “a horrific instance of the surging hostility toward minorities around the country.”

House Majority Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ex-Vice President Joe Biden and other Dems jumped in the fray, fanning racial divisions while others fueled the false narrative that Trump supporters are anti-LGBTQ. Not surprising­ly, Hollywood liberals rushed to defend the actor while trying to blame the purported hate crime on “Trump’s rhetoric.”

Now evidence strongly suggests the whole thing was a hoax.

Video surveillan­ce obtained by police show the attackers were black — not white, as we were initially told. Two Nigerians brothers who had been questioned by police as possible “assailants” are friends with Smollett and authoritie­s are now investigat­ing if the actor orchestrat­ed the hate crime — a stage 4 felony. Reports have also surfaced suggesting Smollett may have rehearsed the “attack” and paid his anti-Trump buddies thousands of dollars to commit the assault upon himself.

This isn’t the first time reckless Democrats and knee-jerk media swallowed allegation­s wholesale that make Republican­s look bad without first vetting the informatio­n.

They did it to poor Brett Kavanaugh, believing his female accusers’ outlandish stories of alleged sexual assault from decades ago without corroborat­ing evidence. Those allegation­s were later rebuked or debunked.

And who can forget the left’s recent ambush against the Covington High School boys? Liberals and fake news media were quick to paint the students as “racists” simply because they’re white, straight and male who committed the ultimate sin — smiling while wearing MAGA hats — on a school trip to D.C.

The teenagers were bullied and defamed en masse before evidence emerged proving they did nothing wrong. The pattern of these false accusation­s show Democrats cannot be trusted to hold positions of power, as they have a history of tossing due process out the window along with the presumptio­n of innocence anytime there’s an opportunit­y to fuel a political narrative.

I dare anyone to find a fair-minded voter who’s impressed.

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