He had paid two black men, both Nigerians, to beat him up and then blamed it on “white racist Trump supporters”.
Filing a false police report is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. Police also believe that Smollett sent the threatening letter to himself via the US Post Office, which would be a federal crime.
Smollett has been charged with one count of criminal disorderly conduct for filing a false police report, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office said on Wednesday evening.
Smollett is due in court in Chicago on Thursday. Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said CPD detectives will make contact with Smollett’s legal team to “negotiate a reasonable surrender for his arrest”.
But the actor is not in custody at this time. Guglielmi told ABC News police are not actively looking for the actor because “this is not a violent crime,” but said “the longer this goes, the more we have to do what we have to do”.
He faces at most one and a half years in prison. The Nigerian brothers who helped him stage this fake hate crime are not facing any charges.
On January 29, 2019, Smollett filed a report with the Chicago Police Department alleging he was assaulted in a hate crime. He told police that he was attacked outside his apartment building by two white men in ski masks who made racial and homophobic slurs, and said “This is MAGA country,” referencing President Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again”.
According to a statement released by the Chicago Police Department, the two “white” suspects then “poured an unknown liquid” on Smollett and put a noose around his neck. Smollett claimed that he fought them off. The police were called and when they arrived, Smollett had a white rope around his neck.
The actor was then admitted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, not seriously injured and released “in good condition” soon after on the same morning.
Public figures and politicians expressed support for Smollett on social media, tweeting their outrage. Democratic senators and presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Cory Booker both described the attack as a “modern-day lynching” and urged Congress to pass a federal Anti-Lynching Bill.
When Smollett faced skepticism regarding his false claim of being attacked, he responded to this by saying that he believed that, if he had said his attackers were Mexicans, Muslims or black people, “the doubters would have supported me much more… And that says a lot about the place that we are in our country right now”.
Financial records indicate that the Nigerian brothers purchased the rope found around Smollett’s neck at a hardware store in Ravenswood over the weekend of January 25.
His family offered support to Smollett, releasing a statement standing with the actor and thanking everyone for their help after what they called an act of “domestic terrorism”.