Jussie Smollett claims Chicago police, Rahm Emanuel conspired against him

The actor told Variety that he would have no reason “to do something as egregious” as what he was accused of.

With an upcoming Netflix documentary about his alleged hate crime hoax, Jussie Smollett maintains that onlookers don’t have the real story of what happened on January 29, 2019.

The “Empire” star spoke to Variety about his career now as an actor and recording artist, and he, of course, made several comments about the bizarre hate crime scandal that started with his police report detailing that he had been attacked and ended with the investigation being turned on him.

“I’m not an investigative reporter or a detective. I can’t sit and tell you exactly, beat by beat, what happened,” Smollett told Variety. ‘I can only tell you what did not happen. And what did not happen is the story that’s been out there for almost seven years, that somehow I would have even a reason to do something as egregious as this.”

At the start of 2019, Smollett reported that he had been attacked by two masked men who beat him, threw chemicals on his face, and tied a noose around his neck. He also said the attackers called him racist and homophobic slurs and referred to President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.” An outpour of support from fans, celebrities, and politicians followed. This changed when Smollett became the target of the investigation he initiated, and Chicago police charged him with disorderly conduct and with filing a false police report.

The Netflix documentary, titled “The Truth About Jussie Smollett?” will be released later this month. It was produced by the creators of “The Tinder Swindler.” The case took many turns as all of the charges were dropped against Smollett in March 2019, but continued when the City of Chicago sued him in April of that year for not compensating the Chicago police for the resources and manpower used for the investigation. By the next year, Smollett had six additional charges brought against him for lying to the police. He was found guilty at the end of 2021 and sentenced to 150 days in jail, along with a $145,000 fine. His lawyers appealed, he spent just six days of his sentence in jail in 2022, and his conviction was eventually overturned in 2024. In May 2025, he reached a settlement with the city, where he donated $50,000 to a non-profit organization, and in a statement posted to his social media, he made it very clear that the city of Chicago received neither money nor an apology.

Smollett told Variety that the “villains” of the story are the two men who allegedly assaulted him, the Chicago Police Department, and the Chicago mayor at the time, Rahm Emanuel. When the first charges were dropped against Smollett, Emanuel called the decision a “whitewash of justice.”

Smollett posed the conspiracy that Emanuel and the police framed him, insinuating that he was used as a distraction from information that they were trying to hide.

“Could it be that they had just found out about the missing minutes and the missing tape from the murder of Laquan McDonald? Could it be that the mayor helped hide that?” he said. “We’re living in a world where the higher-ups, their main mission, in order to do all of the underhanded things that they’re doing, is to distract us with the shiny object.”

It appears that with time, Smollett has only become more unwavering in his view when reflecting on the case. He compared his circumstances to Michael Jackson’s, who was accused of sexually abusing minors and was investigated between 1992 and 2005, and in 2013, after his death.

“I saw firsthand how narratives are built. I saw firsthand the way that someone can take the exact opposite of who you are and literally sell it,” Smollett said. “And people will be like, ‘I believe it!’ God rest his soul, but homeboy Michael Jackson tried to warn us.”