I don’t understand how Chicago cops could have announced last February that they had conclusive evidence against Jussie Smollett arranging to stage a racially-motivated attack with the help of two Nigerian brothers, and then a few weeks later prosecutors drop the whole thing and say “never mind”…the fuck?
I’m sorry but this feels like a fix, like some kind of back-room deal, like Chicago authorities just caved in the interest of…what, noblesse oblige?
All charges against Smollett were dropped this morning, but why? Are you telling me the evidence against him has been found to be bogus? Okay, maybe, but why were authorities convinced otherwise until this morning?
“After reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case, including Mr. Smollett’s volunteer service in the community and agreement to forfeit his [$10K] bond to the City of Chicago, we believe this outcome is a just disposition and appropriate resolution to this case,” the state’s attorney’s office said in a statement this morning.
What the hell could community service and agreeing to forfeit $10K possibly have to do with anything?
If the evidence against Smollett is conclusive, then the prosecutors should proceed with the case. Right? If the Nigerian brothers lied and the whole case was bullshit, then folding their hand would be appropriate. But the facts had been vetted. It seemed as if Smollett was guilty. The cops were persuaded.
Ancient Chinese proverb: “Fish stinks from the head.”
“Is there no decency in this man?” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel asks about Jussie Smollett after prosecutors dropped all charges against the “Empire” actor https://t.co/FTXteyXy0Z pic.twitter.com/b4s3d6Iydk
— CNN (@CNN) March 26, 2019
From Jussie Smollet’s Wikipage: “On 2.13.19, Chicago Police raided the home of two ‘persons of interest” in the Jussie Smollet hate-crime case. The men are brothers and of Nigerian descent and have acted as extras on Empire. Police recovered bleach and other items from the home and are inquiring if the men know Smollett. The brothers were held on suspicion of battery but not charged. According to the brothers’ attorney, they know Smollett from working on the show and have also spent time with him at a gym.
“The two men were arrested after arriving on a flight to O’Hare International Airport from Nigeria on 2.13.19. The two Nigerian men were released on 2.15 without being charged with a crime, with Chicago Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi stating: “Due to new evidence as a result of today’s interrogations, the individuals questioned by police in the Empire case have now been released without charging and detectives have additional investigative work to complete.”
Chicago police later told ABC News: ‘Police are investigating whether the two individuals committed the attack — or whether the attack happened at all.”‘
“On 2.16.19, two Chicago police sources informed CNN that Chicago police had discovered evidence indicating that Smollett had paid the two Nigerian brothers to stage the attack. Financial records indicate that the brothers purchased the rope found around Smollett’s neck at an ACE Hardware. Chicago police have reached out to Smollett’s attorney regarding additional questioning. Chicago criminal defense attorney Michael Monico is representing Smollett.”
Whether or not President Donald Trump tried to grab the wheel of a Presidential SUV on 1.6.21 in an attempt to steer the vehicle toward the U.S. Capitol is a matter of…what’s the expression?…small potatoes. Ditto whether or not Trump grabbed “the clavicles” of Secret Service guy Bobby Engel, the head of his security detail. It’s an amusing story and obviously indicative, if true, of Trump being subject to angry, dopey, volatile behavior, which many people have observed and commented upon for years.
But over the last 24 hours Team Trump has focused on Cassidy Hutchinson‘s second-hand recollection of this episode as an attempt to call her credibility into question. There are some out there who actually believe that Hutchinson lied yesterday…”lied“! Soldiers in the pro-Trump attack machine are calling her “Amber Heard II” and “Jussie Smollett.” But there isn’t a hint of fanciful logic supporting the idea that Hutchinson made this up out of whole cloth.
Hutchinson was told this story, she said, on 1.6.21 in the White House office of Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato, and in the presence of Engel, who was “sitting in a chair, just looking somewhat discombobulated and a little lost,” Hutchinson said.
Here’s the pertinent transcript:
LIZ CHENEY: “And was Mr. Engel in the room as Mr. Ornato told you this story?”
CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: “He was.”
LIZ CHENEY: “Did Mr. Engel correct or disagree with any part of this story from Mr. Ornato?”
CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: “Mr. Engel did not correct or disagree with any part of the story.”
LIZ CHENEY: “Did Mr. Engel or Mr. Ornato ever after that tell you that what Mr. Ornato had just said was untrue?”
CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: “Neither Mr. Ornato nor Mr. Engel told me ever that it was untrue.”
The N.Y. Times is reporting that “Secret Service officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, [have] said that both Mr. Engel and Mr. Ornato would dispute that Mr. Trump tried to grab the wheel of the car or that Mr. Engel was struck.”
Plus The Daily Beast is reporting that the Secret Service was never contacted by the Jan. 6 committee ahead of Hutchison’s testimony.
So what gives?
It would appear that either (a) Hutchinson is half-fibbing, or (b) Ornato and Engel are half-fibbing. But c’mon, no bullshit…what are the odds that Hutchinson would invent the SUV story?
Hutchinson said under oath that Ornato told her the particulars and that Engel was there listening and that Engel didn’t at that moment dispute Ornato’s account. If she was flat-out fabricating Hutchinson could be 100% certain that these guys would step up and say so. Does it make the slightest bit of sense that she would invent this story? To what possible end? She knew she would be immediately busted if she lied, and she’s not apparently the delusional or psychotic type so why would she invent this wild tale?
This is Rashomon, apparently. Check with the ghosts of Akira Kurosawa and/or Martin Ritt. Either Hutchinson is some kind of shifty, side-stepping liar in this instance, or she’s 100% dead certain that Ornato told her about Trump grabbing the wheel and then grabbing Engel’s throat, and has honorably passed this along to the best of her recollection.
Ornato and Engel…who knows? They’ve either persuaded themselves that this particular tale wasn’t passed along quite this way, or perhaps that it’s better for the sake of their own careers and/or the Secret Service’s reputation to dispute the story.
Salon‘s Igor Derysh, posted on 6.29: “Multiple officials who disputed parts of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson‘s testimony to the Jan. 6 committee were seen by some in the Trump administration as the president’s ‘yes men,’ according to Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, who wrote a book about the agency last year.”
I know that it makes no sense at all for Hutchinson to have fabricated the story. What half-sane person would recite a FLAT-OUT LIE on national television, knowing full well that the guy she claimed had told her the story in the first place (plus the guy it happened to and who overheard the original telling) would step right up and call her bluff?
Consider Bari Weiss’s 12.9.21 podcast about the Jussie Smollett fakery. She speaks to Wilfred Reilly, a mixed-race author of “Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War” and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kentucky State University.
Two and one-third years ago I raved about S. Craig Zahler‘s Dragged Across Concrete. This morning I happened to re-read my 3.21.19 review, and I’m wondering how it may have settled into HE community consciousness since then.
Was it an intense flash-in-the-pan thing, or has it acquired some kind of cult status? Has anyone watched it more than once, recommended it to friends, argued about it, found it wanting the second time, etc.?
I called it “a dead fucking brilliant exercise in slow-burn, element-by-element, ultra-violent urban action melodrama. It’s longish (158 minutes) and methodical and about as riveting as this kind of step-by-step ensemble crime film gets. It may be the best rightwing (if morally corrupted) urban action flick since Man on Fire.
“It takes its time, you bet, but once the disparate characters and plot threads start falling into place and it all starts to pay off like a slot machine, watch out.
“Concrete offers the best snarly-tough-guy performance from Mel Gibson in ages, another excellent turn from Vince Vaughn (his best since that True Detective criminal he played during season #2) and a serious pop-through turn by Tory Kittles, who looks like a slightly older Jussie Smollett.
“It’s like a politically conservative Jackie Brown without the mellow, likably laid-back lead performances from Robert Forster and Pam Grier, although Gibson and Vaughn are kind of brusquely charming in their roguishly rightwing, fuck-all deadpan way. Like Jackie Brown it waits and waits and reflects and reflects and then talks and talks and talks some more, and then finally, around the 100-minute mark, wham.
“It’s basically a talkfest thing that waits until Act Three to bring out the hardware and spill the vino. At 154 minutes, Jackie Brown is only four minutes shorter.
Startling currents of denial and obfuscation are contained in an 8.5 Hollywood Reporter piece by Lacey Rose, “Jurnee Smollett Is Ready to Own Her Power With HBO’s Buzzy Lovecraft Country: ‘I Don’t Apologize’“:
For the first time Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country, Birds of Prey) has spoken about the “2019 controversy” swirling around her brother Jussie Smollett.
That’s actually fudging things as her brother’s “controversy” isn’t a matter of unfair gossip or shaky allegations but a six-count indictment of Jussie by a Cook County grand jury, which pertains to Smollett making four false police reports about a hate crime that he allegedly enacted against himself on 1.29.19.
Jussie and Jurnee Smollett.
The “controversy” also includes a 6.12.20 decision in which a judge struck down Smollett’s claim that his February charge violated the principle of double jeopardy.
Jurnee maintains her brother’s innocence in the THR interview. She says “it’s been fucking painful, one of the most painful things my family’s ever experienced — to love someone as much as we love my brother, and to watch someone who you love that much go through something like this, that is so public, has been devastating.”
Jurnee’s implication is that Jussie’s difficulties aren’t of his own making. Life is so unfair, she’s saying, but thank God Jussie is strong enough to handle it — strong enough for the whole family! Or words to that effect.
“I was already in a very dark space for a number of reasons, and I’ve tried to not let it make me pessimistic,” Jurnee continues. “But everyone who knows me knows that I love my brother and I believe my brother.”
Note the sequence — Jurnee (a) loves Jussie and therefore (b) believes him.
Jurnee contends that her support for her brother hasn’t hurt her career. “We are blessed to have a community of people who know him, and know that he wouldn’t do this,” she says. “I mean, fuck, man, I look at him sometimes and I’m like, ‘He’s so strong.'”
Jurnee translation: “Industry people understand that family loyalty always comes first, and that I have no choice but to say I believe Jussie. They get it. They know what I have to say and do. And at the end of the day, none of this shit is on me.”
The spirit is upon him, etc. Great stuff. It’s roughly what I would say if I was Chicago’s mayor.
Letting Jussie Smollett slide because he merely acted selfishly and sociopathically, and because he didn’t commit a serious felony (he basically just “put on a show” as a way of servicing his faltering career)…that’s not a call I would have approved. But I understand why his friends muscled this through. They figured it was better to “fix” the situation than see Smollett descend into a pit of career hell. But Smollett continuing to insist that he’s innocent and that he really was attacked….that part really stinks. And in its own way is just as odious and rancid as the idiot Trump wind.
S. Craig Zahler‘s Dragged Across Concrete (3.22) is a dead fucking brilliant exercise in slow-burn, element-by-element, ultra-violent urban action melodrama. It’s longish (158 minutes) and methodical and about as riveting as this kind of step-by-step ensemble crime film gets. It may be the best rightwing (if morally corrupted) urban action flick since Man on Fire. It takes its time, you bet, but once the disparate characters and plot threads start falling into place and it all starts to pay off like a slot machine, watch out.
It offers the best snarly-tough-guy performance from Mel Gibson in ages, another excellent turn from Vince Vaughn (his best since that True Detective criminal he played during season #2) and a serious pop-through turn by Tory Kittles, who looks like a slightly older Jussie Smollett.
Dragged Across Concrete is like a politically conservative Jackie Brown without the mellow, likably laid-back lead performances from Robert Forster and Pam Grier, although Gibson and Vaughn are kind of brusquely charming in their roguishly rightwing, fuck-all deadpan way. Like Jackie Brown it waits and waits and reflects and reflects and then talks and talks and talks some more, and then finally, around the 100-minute mark, wham.
It’s basically a talkfest thing that waits until Act Three to bring out the hardware and spill the vino. At 154 minutes, Jackie Brown is only four minutes shorter.
On the other hand, Quentin Tarantino never wrote a scene in which bank robbers cut open a dead guy’s stomach cavity and then his actual stomach in search of a swallowed key, especially with one of them saying “don’t cut open the liver…the smell is awful, especially a black guy’s.” What?
If you have any regard for this kind of thing — spare and lean, character-rich, laconic Peckinpah on painkillers, well-crafted dialogue, violent, far from lazily paced but in no particular hurry, flicked with despair and anxiety and every character being either a behind-the-eight-baller or a victim — Dragged Across Concrete is absolutely essential viewing.
The urban action thriller handbook says you always accelerate the pace when the third act arrives. Zahler is one of those “fuck the handbook” types. Just before a climatic bank robbing scene he suddenly shifts our attention to a late 30something bank officer (Jennifer Carpenter) returning to work after maternity leave. And yet she can’t bear the thought of a nine-hour absence from her infant son, and so she returns to her apartment for a final snuggle before heading to work. That’s all I’m going to describe, but I will never forget this character.
Hats off to Summit Entertainment for doing a brilliant job of muffling or minimizing the buzz on this startling film, which I regard as easily the second best of 2019’s first quarter, right behind Kent Jones‘ Diane (IFC Films, 3.29).
To my knowledge Summit has screened Concrete twice (in Lionsgate’s West L.A. screening room) over the last few days. I had to appeal to a fellow journalist to obtain a screening link. Costar Vince Vaughn will do a discussion following a Hollywood Arclight screening this evening. I’d love to drop by and “cover”, but only on my own dime. A Summit rep said they have no journo comps.
It’s been suggested that the sooner Jussie Smollett offers a full mea culpa and falls on his sword, the better. Issue an unqualified apology to all the actual victims of racist or anti-gay hate attacks and also (I know this sounds extreme but he may as well be comprehensive) to the reprehensible MAGA community. He just needs to come clean, drop to his knees, weep, beg forgiveness, and announce that he’s entered therapy. Then he needs to write a magazine article about what happened. And then go on a talk-show and speaking tour. After he pays the fine and serves the time, he needs to move to Paris or Barcelona or Berlin. He could become a stand-up comic, billing himself as Jussie “lying ayehole” Smollett.
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