The city of Chicago believes it wasted time and over 100,000 city dollars investigating Jussie Smollett’s alleged attack, Ebony reports.
It appears Jussie Smollett can’t get a break and isn’t done facing backlash for allegedly faking a hate crime in January. The city of Chicago recently sent a letter to the Empire actor’s camp, demanding $130,000 to reimburse the cost of investigating what they say were false claims.
A spokesperson for the city told TMZ, “Mr. Smollett has refused to reimburse the City of Chicago for the cost of police overtime spent investigating his false police report on January 29, 2019. The Law Department is now drafting a civil complaint that will be filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County. Once it is filed, the Law Department will send a courtesy copy of the complaint to Mr. Smollett’s L.A. based legal team.”
The city is allowed to request three times the actual cost of the investigation, bringing potential damages up to $390,000. It would also be responsible for proving Smollett, more likely than not, faked the attack.
In January 2019, popular gay actor and singer Jussie claimed that he was attacked by two people who were yelling out racial and homophobic slurs and poured an unknown chemical substance on him. One of the alleged attackers also put a rope around his neck, The Sauce reported.
As reported by The Sauce last month, the state’s attorney recently dropped the criminal case against the actor in which he faced 16 felony counts. Meanwhile, Jussie had remained adamant that he was not guilty of planning his own hate crime.
