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      Lawyers in Jussie Smollett Case Tangle Over Motive as Testimony Ends

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      Mr. Smollett was questioned Tuesday by the prosecution about his interactions with his attackers shortly before the 2019 assault.Testimony in the trial over whether Jussie Smollett lied to police about being the victim of a hate crime ended on Tuesday after the actor was questioned closely by the prosecution about his interactions with his attackers shortly before the assault.Deliberations in the case are expected to start Wednesday after closing arguments and six days of testimony in which two brothers said Mr. Smollett had staged the attack as a publicity stunt and the actor characterized them as rank liars.On Tuesday, Mr. Smollett fended off accusations that he had planned the assault with the brothers, Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo, in the days and hours before the 2019 attack, describing their encounters as harmless.In one meeting two days before the assault, he said, he and Abimbola Osundairo had simply been smoking marijuana while Mr. Smollett drove the brothers around Chicago before a scheduled workout session. He had hired Abimbola Osundairo to help him get “ripped” for a music video, he said.“There was nothing strange or wrong going on,” Mr. Smollett said of his drive with the brothers.But the prosecution took issue with his account, grilling him Tuesday on why their drive had continued to circle the area where the attack later occurred.Similarly, Daniel K. Webb, the special prosecutor in the case, pressed Mr. Smollett about why he had continued to update Abimbola Osundairo about delays to his flight back to Chicago in the late-night hours of Jan. 28, 2019, shortly before the attack occurred.The brothers have testified that Mr. Smollett was keeping them apprised of the delay so they could move back the time of their prearranged attack on him, which occurred at about 2 a.m.Mr. Smollett testified that, actually, he was only keeping Abimbola Osundairo in the loop because they had plans to work out.Mr. Webb noted, though, that there were no follow-up texts or emails canceling the workout, which was scheduled for the morning of Jan. 29, after the attack. He asked Mr. Smollet whether Abimbola Osundairo showed up for the appointment that morning.“I’m saying I don’t know,” Mr. Smollett replied.Mr. Smollett also testified that on the night of the attack, he had been posting updates about his flight to his Instagram followers and that Abimbola Osundairo was not the only person who messaged him directly about it, suggesting that the messages did not indicate that they had been coordinating the attack.The back-and-forth often grew heated and Mr. Smollett grew flustered at times, leading Judge James Linn to urge him to answer the prosecutor’s questions directly.In testimony earlier in the week, the brothers had described how Mr. Smollett outlined in detail the planned attack after expressing disappointment that the producers of the television show he starred in, “Empire,” had not responded more seriously to a death threat he had received in the mail.An employee of the show disputed that contention Monday, reporting that the show had actually offered to get security to drive Mr. Smollett back and forth to his home from the studio, but the actor had refused.Mr. Smollett, 39, has pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of disorderly conduct related to his report of the attack as a hate crime because of the racist and homophobic slurs uttered by his attackers. His lawyers have argued that the Osundairo brothers attacked him because they wanted to scare him into hiring them as his security detail. Mr. Smollett testified on Monday that Abimbola Osundairo persistently asked to act as his bodyguard, including after he received the threatening letter.Prosecutors have contended that the brothers only beat Mr. Smollett up enough to bruise but not seriously injure him and placed a rope around his neck, fashioned like a noose, to make it seem like he had been the victim of a hate crime. Mr. Smollett on Tuesday swung back on that narrative, suggesting his injuries had indeed been serious enough that, to this day, he has a scar under his right eye that won’t go away.Daniel K. Webb, special prosecutor in the Smollett case, arrives at the courthouse in Chicago on Monday, when he began his cross examination of Mr. Smollett.Kamil Krzaczynski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMuch of Mr. Webb’s questioning focused on events from Jan. 27, when the Osundairo brothers say Mr. Smollett took them through the “dry run,” driving them to an intersection near his apartment building and pointing out where he wanted the attack to occur.Mr. Smollett testified that on that day, he had gone to pick up Abimbola Osundairo for a workout session, and when Olabinjo Osundairo inexplicably joined him at the pickup spot, Mr. Smollett said he used an upcoming television interview as an excuse to cancel the workout and drive the brothers back home.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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      Jussie Smollett Tells Jury He Did Not Direct a Fake Attack on Himself

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      The actor, who is accused of asking two brothers to mildly attack him, and then reporting it as a hate crime, took the stand at his criminal trial on charges related to the 2019 assault.Jussie Smollett took the stand on Monday in an effort to convince a Chicago jury that he did not orchestrate a racist and homophobic hate crime against himself but, instead, was the victim of both a real attack and the police’s rush to judgment in charging him.Mr. Smollett, 39, submitted himself to questioning in his own trial to rebut the testimony of two key witnesses, Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo, brothers who told the court last week that Mr. Smollett had instructed them in detail on how to attack him.The Osundairo brothers said Mr. Smollett took them through a “dry run” of the attack on the day before it was supposed to occur in January 2019 and asked one of them to bruise him without inflicting real injuries while the other put a rope around his neck and poured bleach on him.Prosecutors have argued that Mr. Smollett staged the attack because he was upset that the show on which he starred, the Fox hip-hop drama “Empire,” did not take seriously a threatening letter he had received at the studio.But Mr. Smollett sought to undercut the prosecution’s explanation, testifying that he had refused the studio’s offer of additional security, which would have driven him each day from his home to the set.“I’m a grown man,” Mr. Smollett said. “I don’t need to be driven around like Miss Daisy.”He also supported the defense contention that the brothers attacked him so that he might be scared enough to hire them as his private security. Mr. Smollett said that Abimbola Osundairo was persistent in trying to act as his bodyguard, at times behaving when they went out in ways that reminded him of the “Secret Service.”And Mr. Smollett’s version of what happened on Jan. 25, 2019, just days before the attack, when the prosecution says Mr. Smollett asked Abimbola Osundairo for help “on the low,” was completely different. He was seeking a meeting, not to plan his own assault, but to arrange to get an herbal steroid from Nigeria that helps people lose body fat and is illegal in the United States.“At any point in time did you talk to him about some hoax?” Mr. Smollett’s lawyer, Nenye Uche, asked.“No,” Mr. Smollett replied.During their car ride later, they did not plan the attack, as the prosecution argued, but smoked marijuana, Mr. Smollett said.“We drove around and smoked and that was that,” he testified.Olabinjo Osundairo, at the courthouse, where he testified Thursday that Mr. Smollett had orchestrated the attack.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressAbimbola Osundairo, Olabinjo’s brother, told the court last week that Mr. Smollett was upset that a threatening letter he received had not been taken more seriously.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressMr. Smollett also sought early in his testimony to indicate just how happy he had been with his role on “Empire,” and, when asked directly, said he had no problem with Fox. Instead Mr. Smollett, who is gay, testified that it had been a blessing to win the role of Jamal Lyon, a gay singer-songwriter, that so closely mirrored his identity and to eventually earn $100,000 per episode.“I had never seen a gay man — let alone a gay Black man — portrayed ever,” Mr. Smollett said. “I really, really wanted to do it.”Over the course of the trial, prosecutors have sought to paint a picture of the attack as a bid for publicity, pointing to how, days before the attack, Mr. Smollett had received the letter at the studio for “Empire.” It included a red stick figure hanging from a noose, a homophobic slur and the acronym “MAGA,” said Daniel K. Webb, the special prosecutor in the case, in the courtroom last week.“He devised this fake hate crime to take place so that the ‘Empire’ studio would take this more seriously,” Mr. Webb said, “because this fake hate crime would get media attention.”But the showrunner for “Empire” at the time, Brett Mahoney, testified earlier on Monday that the show had actually taken the letter “very seriously,” and sought to provide Mr. Smollett with additional security.As he began his testimony, Mr. Smollett depicted himself to the jury with a lengthy biographical summary of his career as someone who grew up in a middle-class family of performers, received some work as a child actor, became deeply involved in charity organizations and returned to acting, landing the major role on “Empire.”In January 2019, when the attack was reported, public sympathy for Mr. Smollett was immediate and widespread. But as the police investigation into the report stalled, suspicion grew about Mr. Smollett’s account, though the actor stood by it.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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      Jussie Smollett’s Lawyers Dispute Account That Attack Was Staged

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      Under questioning by Mr. Smollett’s defense team, two brothers who say they participated in a fake attack denied suggestions they had lied to avoid prosecution.Jussie Smollett’s lawyers suggested in court on Thursday that two brothers at the center of the case attacked the actor to scare him into hiring them as his personal security, and later, to avoid prosecution, falsely told the police that Mr. Smollett had planned it all as a hoax.The brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, have each testified that Mr. Smollett gave them detailed instructions on where and how to mildly attack him in January 2019.“You attacked Jussie because you wanted to scare him into hiring you as security,” said a lawyer for Mr. Smollett, Shay Allen, “so you could go back to L.A. and get paid $5,000 a week, didn’t you?”“No, sir,” Abimbola Osundairo replied.During cross-examination, the brothers, both aspiring actors and fitness aficionados, disputed that and other defense contentions about the attack. During more than 11 hours of testimony, which touched on minute details like Mr. Smollett’s grocery list and workout regimen, they told the court that Mr. Smollett instructed them to yell racist and homophobic slurs at him — and say, “This is MAGA country” — during the attack.During one of the brothers’ testimony, the defense asked for a mistrial, suggesting the judge had misspoken during the proceedings and later asked for the judge to acquit Mr. Smollett. But Judge James Linn ruled against Mr. Smollett in both instances.Thursday was a pivotal day in the trial as the prosecution, whose case relies heavily on the brothers’ credibility, rested after each brother told the jury in detail that Mr. Smollett had knowingly made a false police report about the attack.Abimbola Osundairo, 28, testified on Wednesday that Mr. Smollett, who is gay, dreamed up the scheme because he had been disappointed by what he saw as a muted response from the television studio to a death threat he received days earlier.Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo both appear in minor roles in the television show “Empire,” in which Mr. Smollett had starred. Abimbola Osundairo said he had agreed to participate in the hoax because he felt “indebted” to Mr. Smollett for securing him a role as a stand-in on the show, while Olabinjo Osundairo said that, as an aspiring actor, he had agreed because he wanted to “curry favor” with Mr. Smollett.The defense’s efforts to undermine the brothers’ credibility included questions about guns and drugs found in Abimbola Osundairo’s home and accusations that Olabinjo Osundairo had a history of making homophobic comments.Olabinjo Osundairo is not legally allowed to possess a gun because he was convicted of aggravated battery several years ago. But a detective testified earlier in the week that the guns were all Abimbola Osundairo’s and were owned legally and described the amount of cocaine discovered as “very small.”One of Mr. Smollett’s lawyers, Tamara Walker, also cited discrepancies between Olabinjo Osundairo’s testimony and what he had said to the grand jury in the case. He told the grand jury, for example, that he had decided to pour bleach, instead of gasoline, onto Mr. Smollett because he wanted to avoid being seen filling up a gas container on a surveillance camera. In court on Thursday, though, he testified that he had chosen bleach because he thought it would be safer on Mr. Smollett.The brothers remained composed during their sessions on the witness stand even as they were being questioned about several written conversations that Olabinjo Osundairo has had in which he made remarks that the defense cited as homophobic.Olabinjo Osundairo, 30, denied any bias, explained the remarks as mistakes he had made because he was upset and asserted that he had “no hate for anybody.” The prosecution had earlier in the day shown the jury a photo of the brothers at the Chicago Pride Parade in 2015 in which they were dressed as Trojan warriors for a float that centered around the condom brand of the same name.The mistrial request arose from this line of questioning as Judge Linn at one point described Ms. Walker’s questions about Mr. Osundairo’s past comments as “very collateral matters.” She argued, unsuccessfully, that the judge’s remark had discredited a part of the defense argument in front of the jury.A third lawyer for Mr. Smollett, Heather Widell, accused Judge Linn of making “snarling faces” during the defense questioning. The judge objected to Ms. Widell’s characterization and pointed out her own “smiles and frowns.”“There is no mistrial here,” Judge Linn said. “Frankly, I’m stunned you’d consider a mistrial based on that little colloquy.”Jussie Smollett’s trial entered its fourth day as the prosecution wound down its case and the defense challenged the credibility of two brothers who say the attack Mr. Smollett reported was a hoax.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressEarlier in the day, Olabinjo Osundairo testified that during the attack on Jan. 29, 2019, while his brother and Mr. Smollett were on the ground, he put a noose around Mr. Smollett’s face and made sure to pour the bleach on Mr. Smollett’s clothing, not his skin, to avoid severely injuring him.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More