The case against actor Jussie Smollet is getting more and more strange. The Empire actor claimed that he was attacked by a group of racist Donald Trump supporters, and he caused a nationwide manhunt.
But the Chicago police, led by Superintendent Eddie Johnson, investigating the claims and concluded that Jussie was allegedly lying. They then tried to put charges on the actor – and called his story a “hoax.”
Well now that same Superintendent Eddie Johnson was unexpectedly fired Monday, just weeks before he was set to retire. That ended a rocky, three-year tenure as head of a department marked by controversies – none larger than what happened with Jussie Smollet.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Eddie’s firing yesterday, and she suggested that it was Johnson’s personal failures that caused her to fire him. She didn’t mention the Jussie incident by name, but it was implied.
“Upon a thorough review of the materials of the Inspector General’s ongoing investigation, it has become clear that Mr. Johnson engaged in a series of ethical lapses that are intolerable,” Lightfoot said in a statement ahead of a news conference in which she rebuked Johnson for his conduct.
“Eddie Johnson intentionally lied to me several times even when I challenged him about the narrative that he shared with me,” she later said. “He maintained that he was telling the truth. I now know definitively that he was not.”
Jussie is currently suing the Chicago police department for slander. His team claims that they uncovered “damaging” documents against members of the Chicago police.
We now have to consider – what if Jussie was telling the truth all along??