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.
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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.