Jussie Smollett Paying $50K to Charity in Settlement With City of Chicago | TMZ Live - video Dailymotion

TMZ

Jussie Smollett's stuck a pretty sweet deal with the Windy City -- instead of paying 6-figures in restitution for the hate crime hoax investigation, he's donating $50,000 to charity ... TMZ has learned.

Transcript

00:00It has been a long, long, long ordeal.

00:04Six years.

00:05Six years for more than six years now for Jussie Smollett and the city of Chicago,

00:11who have been going back and forth over the hate crime hoax that went down.

00:19You remember Jussie said that it happened to him on January, I think it was 29th or 30th,

00:252019, that two MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporters.

00:34A.K.A. the Yashendario brothers.

00:35Yes, who turned out to not be white at all.

00:41They had, you know, yelled things at him, homophobic slurs, racist slurs.

00:48And we all know how that all played out.

00:49The news is the whole thing.

00:50Right.

00:50Now, late last year, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned Jussie's conviction.

00:56So his criminal part of this was over.

00:58And we should say, they did it because he had made a deal already with prosecutors,

01:01and he served some community service.

01:03They said it's over, so they reversed it.

01:05So the criminal part was over, but he was still dealing with a civil lawsuit that the city had filed against him.

01:10Well, I should say, they had gotten restitution in the criminal case,

01:14but when the criminal case got wiped out, the city said,

01:17we want our money for all the overtime to investigate it.

01:20So they filed this civil lawsuit seeking the money, which was, I believe, around $120,000, $130,000, they said,

01:28that they wanted back.

01:30Well, now they have reached a settlement, and victory, Jussie Smollett.

01:35Jussie Smollett ultimately wins.

01:37There's no other way to put this, that when it's all said and done, he wins,

01:41because he is going to pay $50,000, but it's not going to the city of Chicago.

01:48It's going to a charity.

01:49And by the way, the deal, we found out, the deal, the settlement they struck was,

01:54he got to choose the charity.

01:55It's not even like the city said, okay, at least it's going to be a charity that we want.

02:00But wait.

02:01Jussie got to choose the charity.

02:02But wait, there's more.

02:03And he gets a tax deduction.

02:05He'll get a tax deduction.

02:07He is not admitting guilt.

02:08But I don't know how, I don't know what the city of Chicago got out of it.

02:13Well, check this out.

02:14We know that there was a, this is a kind of a secret settlement,

02:18and they were going to announce it late in the day tomorrow,

02:23which is the beginning of Memorial Day weekend.

02:26So we would get buried.

02:28Yeah, that's the game.

02:29And all the citizens of Chicago would just be out celebrating and not hearing about how.

02:34Bless the wiser.

02:34They have to pay this $130,000.

02:38You know, for those of us who were around when this all happened

02:41and sat through the trial and everything else,

02:43it's pretty frustrating for those people who believe that he really did something awful here.

02:48Not only did he sort of allegedly, and I think we can all say with somewhat,

02:51some certainty, sort of concoct a crime and make it into a huge political statement,

02:56but he seems to have come out of it smelling like roses.

02:59He seemed to have been reaccepted back into Hollywood society.

03:02He paid a small fee that, to your point, Harvey, is tax deductible.

03:05He suffered no criminal sanction whatsoever.

03:08As a matter of fact, in some quarters,

03:10he's being celebrated as somebody who took on the system and won.

03:13So, I think at the end of the day...

03:15Jason, I don't know, Jason, shorthand, he pulled a Trump.

03:18You know what, he pulled a Trump.

03:19Yes.

03:19You know who suffered a Trump.

03:20Which is, that's how this all started, with him trying to attack.

03:23Isn't that just unbelievable?

03:24Make a point, make a statement about Trump.

03:27He pulled a Trump.

03:28I haven't heard about Jussie in, honestly, six years since Empire,

03:36since this hate crime hoax.

03:38And at the same time, this will always be tied to his name.

03:41So, he can't really outrun it.

03:43And at the same time, he's an out-of-work actor.

03:45Like, I am having a hard time understanding how he even has $50,000 to pay.

03:49But, at the end of the day, look, he's lost six years of his life.

03:53He's lost $50,000, his reputation.

03:56And he's walking away with just a tax deduction, a tax rate.

03:59I don't understand why the city of Chicago...

04:01I mean, maybe it was just the legal fees for them to keep fighting this thing.

04:05It's more than the $130,000.

04:06Right.

04:07And so, they're like, well, we're just throwing good money after bad.

04:10They could have won it.

04:11Because, in the criminal case, 12 jurors unanimously, beyond a reasonable doubt,

04:16said he was guilty.

04:17And all they have to do is, preponderance of the evidence,

04:20just tip the scales a little bit, which is way easier.

04:22So, it's not like it couldn't have won the case if it had gone to...

04:25But it was just getting far too expensive.

04:27That's right.

Jussie Smollett Paying $50K to Charity in Settlement With City of Chicago | TMZ Live

Category

Transcript

Recommended