What Happened to Jussie Smollett? Revisiting the Actor's Bizarre Assault Case and Why He Continues to Maintain His Innocence By Jessica Sager

In January 2019, Jussie Smollett alleged that he was a victim of a hate crime — but in the end, Smollett was the one facing charges.

Smollett, who identifies as gay and Black, claimed two masked men assaulted him, doused him with bleach, put a rope around his neck and called him homophobic and racial slurs. Prosecutors, however, alleged that the attack on the Empire star was a hoax and that he staged the incident for attention and paid two brothers to beat him up.

Years of criminal and civil litigation followed, and despite spending time in jail and paying tens of thousands of dollars to the city of Chicago, Smollett never changed his story and has always maintained his innocence.

“Those moments changed the course of my entire life,” Smollett said in the Netflix documentary The Truth About Jussie Smollett?. “My story’s never changed. My story’s remained intact.”

The documentary examines previously unreleased footage from the night of the alleged attack, as well as videos from the Chicago Police Department’s investigation into the alleged hoax.

So what is the actual truth about Smollett’s alleged hate crime? Find out what really happened — and why the reality may be murkier than initial headlines made it seem.

Who is Jussie Smollett?

Smollett was born June 21, 1982, in Santa Rosa, Calif., the third of six kids. After getting small roles as a child, he and his family moved to Los Angeles so he and his siblings could work in Hollywood. Smollett told Out magazine that his mother was initially reluctant to let her kids pursue show business careers despite acting as their manager.

Jussie starred in 1992’s The Mighty Ducks and, with the rest of his siblings, in the short-lived ABC sitcom On Our Own, but told Out he struggled to find work as a young adult.

“I wasn’t a child star, I was just a working actor,” he said. “And then I wasn’t a cutesy kid anymore, but I also wasn’t a leading man.”

Smollett spent several years focusing on activism and traveling before booking guest roles on series including Revenge and The Mindy Project.

When he heard about Lee Daniels’ Empire, he auditioned and landed the role of Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard) and Cookie Lyon’s (Taraji P. Henson) son Jamal in the hit Fox series, which premiered on Jan. 7, 2015. He signed with Columbia Records the following month and later directed episodes of the show that made him famous.

What happened to Jussie Smollett?

In January 2019, Smollett received a racist, threatening letter with a homophobic slur at Fox Studios, leading the production company to increase security on the Empire set.

The following week, on Jan. 29, 2019, Smollett was walking home from a Subway sandwich shop in Chicago around 2 a.m. when two masked men attacked him, splashed bleach on him and put a rope around his neck.

Smollett alleged that the men were White and yelled racist and homophobic slurs. Smollett said he was on the phone with his manager at the time of the incident and that the attackers fled the scene.

Smollett said in The Truth About Jussie Smollett? that though the men wore balaclavas, he could see some of the space around their eyes and that they had pale skin.

He walked home after the attack and his manager went to his apartment, calling police about 40 minutes after the alleged hate crime took place. Bodycam footage from police at Smollett’s apartment showed him wearing the rope around his neck from the alleged attack and asking officers to turn their cameras off.

Who allegedly attacked Jussie Smollett?

On Feb. 13, 2019, two brothers, Abimbola “Bola” and Olabinjo “Ola” Osundairo, were arrested for attacking Smollett. Two days later, however, they were released without charges.

In his testimony, Smollett said he met Abimbola at a nightclub while filming Empire and that he and Abimbola had gone to a bathhouse together, did drugs and were intimate, which Abimbola denied. Smollett later got Abimbola a stand-in role on Empire and hired him as a personal trainer.

After meeting with the Osundairos, the Chicago police transitioned their investigation from finding Smollett’s attackers to investigating Smollett himself. The Osundairos later sued Smollett’s attorneys for defamation, the Associated Press reported.

Despite the Osundairos claiming they were part of a hoax, Smollett maintains that his attackers were two White men, something that two witnesses — neither of whom knew Smollett — corroborated in The Truth About Jussie Smollett?.

Anthony Moore, a security guard at a hotel near the crime scene, said in the documentary, “[The man I saw] had a mask on. I couldn’t see his full face. I could just see he had the eye cut out [of his mask], so obviously, you could see the skin right around the eyes. From what I saw, it was a caucasian male, a White guy.”

Moore said that despite telling police he saw a pale man, police asked him to choose a suspect from a lineup of only Black men.

One of Smollett’s neighbors in his building said in the film that she’d seen “a White man, maybe mid-30s, and he had a beanie hat on … As I got closer, I looked and kind of sticking out of the back of his jacket, you could see kind of a rope.”

In The Truth About Jussie Smollett?, investigative journalist Chelli Stanley pointed out that none of the witnesses chose the Osundairo brothers out of the lineups provided, while Abigail Carr noted that forensics found two people’s DNA on the noose — and that neither of the Osundairos matched it.

What did Jussie Smollett allegedly do?

Smollett initially declined to turn his cellphone over to authorities, which a friend of the actor said in the documentary was merely because of all the private and personal contact information it contained. He later submitted redacted phone records, according to The New York Times.

On Feb. 21, 2019, Smollett turned himself in to police and hours later appeared in bond court, where prosecutors claimed to have found texts between Smollett and Abimbola. One text read, “Might need your help on the low. You around to meet up and talk face to face?”

According to prosecutors, other texts between the group directly referenced staging the attack, including a request for Ola to participate, as well as instructions not to batter him too badly and to give him an opportunity to appear to fight back.

Authorities accused Smollett of paying the brothers $3,500 for the attack, which Smollett and his attorneys vehemently denied at the time and still say is untrue.

In the documentary, Smollett said the text was regarding an illegal performance-enhancing drug and that the check was for Abel’s training services.

“I’m embarrassed to say this, but it was for an herbal steroid that was illegal in the U.S. that can be gotten in Nigeria, and it was to lose belly fat,” he said. “I wrote a check to my trainer for a five-week period, which is the time that he was supposed to be working. It’s a business check. That’s what it was for.”

What was Jussie Smollett charged with?

Initially, Smollett was charged with 16 counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly filing false police reports and pleaded not guilty. However, on March 26, 2019, prosecutors dropped all charges against the actor, noting that he’d forfeited his bond and performed community service.

Three days after Smollett was cleared of criminal charges, the city of Chicago demanded he pay more than $130,000 for police overtime and costs associated with the investigation into the alleged hoax, and the city formally sued Smollett for the sum the following month. (Smollett filed his own countersuit in November 2019.)

In August 2019, Dan Webb was appointed special prosecutor to investigate why the Cook County District Attorney’s office dropped criminal charges against Smollett. In January 2020, Webb sought a year’s worth of data, messages and emails from Google in his investigation. A month later, Webb indicted Smollett for six counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly filing false reports. He once more pleaded not guilty.

What was Jussie Smollett found guilty of?

Smollett’s trial began in November 2021, with the “Hurt People” singer testifying in his own defense. After more than nine hours of deliberations, on Dec. 9, 2021, a jury convicted Smollett of five of the six counts against him.

On March 10, 2022, Smollett was sentenced to 30 months of felony probation, with the first 150 days spent in jail. Cook County Judge James Linn also ordered Smollett to pay the maximum fine of $25,000, plus more than $120,000 in restitution.

On his way out of his sentencing hearing to jail, Smollett removed his face mask and yelled, “I am not suicidal, and if anything happens to me when I go [to jail], I didn’t do it to myself and you must all remember that.”

Smollett was released from jail after just six days of his sentence as his legal team appealed his conviction. According to documents obtained by PEOPLE, the Illinois Appellate Court approved the release because Smollett’s convictions were for non-violent offenses.

Why was Jussie Smollett’s conviction overturned?

On Nov. 21, 2024, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned Smollett’s conviction on the grounds that Smollett’s rights were violated when the special prosecutor pursued charges after they were dropped.

Webb claimed that overturning the conviction had “nothing to do with Mr. Smollett’s innocence” and that the court didn’t find any errors in the evidence presented at his trial. Smollett’s attorneys said in a statement that the trial was a result of “vindictive prosecution.”

In May 2025, Smollett announced on Instagram that he’d settled with the city of Chicago after a $50,000 donation to Building Brighter Futures Center for the Arts, plus an additional $10,000 to the Chicago Torture Justice Center.

“Over six years ago, after it was reported I had been jumped, City Officials in Chicago set out to convince the public that I willfully set an assault against myself. This false narrative has left a stain on my character that will not soon disappear,” he wrote. “These officials wanted my money and wanted my confession for something I did not do. Today, it should be clear….They have received neither.”

What has Jussie Smollett said of the incident?

Smollett has continued to maintain his innocence in the years since the alleged assault.

He revealed to Entertainment Tonight that he spent $3 million to legally clear his name, and he alluded to PEOPLE in September 2024 that his finances were key to helping him appeal his case.

“I’m not going to sit here and victimize myself and be like ‘Woe is me,’ because there’s so many people that don’t have the platform or the resources that I have to protect themselves,” Smollett said, noting that many innocent people take plea deals because it’s “the easier way out.”

“I’m very well aware of my privilege in this situation. That’s why there’s a certain point where it’s just like, I can’t hold on to the pain,” he said. “That’s why I’m blessed to continue on and make films and make music and do the things that I was put down here by God to do.”