“No matter how much people are yelling in my face, saying \u2018You\u2019re a liar, you\u2019re a liar.\u2019 No, I\u2019m not.”\n
Jussie Smollett said he\u2019s spent $3 million appealing his conviction following a purported hate crime attack he was ruled to have staged himself.\n
\u201cI want to have all of these things in my life, and I don\u2019t want to have a felony on my record for something that I didn\u2019t do,\u201d Smollett said during an interview with Entertainment Tonight. \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re fighting for. I know that on the surface it probably seems like why doesn\u2019t he just serve the time, why doesn\u2019t he just let this go. It would be easier if I had in fact done this to say that I did it. I wouldn\u2019t have spent almost $3 million of my own money. I would not have had a trial.\u201d\n
The actor told police on January 29, 2019, that he was attacked by two men in Chicago at 2 a.m. who he claimed made racist and homophobic slurs, wrapped a rope around his neck, poured an \u201cunknown substance\u201d on him, and yelled that this is \u201cMAGA country.\u201d It was later found that Smollett had hired two Nigerian brothers to help him stage the attack.\n
The \u201cEmpire\u201d star was convicted on five counts of disorderly conduct in 2021 and spent just six days in jail after appealing his 150 day sentence. Smollett was charged with 16 counts of lying to police, but those charges were dropped.\n
Smollett has insisted upon his innocence all along.\n
\u201cAs an entertainer, as a businessman, I probably should [stop fighting the charges],\u201d Smollett told ET.\n
\u201cBut as a human being and as a man, as a black man and as an openly gay black man, I have a problem with letting them win on something they shouldn\u2019t be able to,\u201d the actor continued. \u201cI\u2019m a grown man and something happened. I can\u2019t tell exactly what did happen, but I can tell you what did not happen. That\u2019s what I have to sit on. No matter how much people are yelling in my face, saying \u2018You\u2019re a liar, you\u2019re a liar.\u2019 No, I\u2019m not. No, I\u2019m not. I don\u2019t want them to believe that, but if that is what they believe, that\u2019s on you.\u201d\n
He argued that while \u201cfighting the very things that are untrue,\u201d he got tripped up by some truths which he claims were used \u201cto prove things that were not true.\u201d\n
\u201cSo there were those moments where I was like, \u2018Oh my goodness, my life is kind of \u2014 oh, well, I didn\u2019t do that.\u2019 And they\u2019re like, \u2018But you did this.\u2019 And I\u2019m like \u2018Ah, I did do that. I did buy that.\u2019 And there are things like that that I\u2019ve had to talk to my family about, that I\u2019ve had to talk to friends about,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m OK with accepting responsibility for things that I\u2019ve actually done. I\u2019m just not OK with accepting responsibility for things that I did not do.\u201d\n
Smollett also insists he\u2019s being honest because he claims his story never changed, but he says other stories relating to the incident did.\n
\u201cI\u2019ve stood by, not my truth but the truth for the entire time, almost six years,\u201d he said. \u201cI haven\u2019t switched my story up. I haven\u2019t changed anything that I ever said. I stand by every single thing that I\u2019ve ever said. Everyone else in the situation, every single person, has changed their story numerous times,\u201d Smollett told the outlet.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jussie Smollett Says He Spent $3M Appealing Hoax Case, Maintains His Original Story “No matter how much people are yelling in my face, saying \u2018You\u2019re a liar, you\u2019re a liar.\u2019 No, I\u2019m not.” Jussie Smollett said he\u2019s spent $3 million appealing his conviction following a purported hate crime attack he was ruled to have staged\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":93367,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[670],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-93360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thefinejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/5.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefinejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefinejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefinejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefinejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefinejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thefinejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93368,"href":"https:\/\/thefinejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93360\/revisions\/93368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefinejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefinejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefinejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefinejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}