Actor Jussie Smollett Picture: Danny Moloshok/Reuters/African News Agency (ANA) Archives



News of the bizarre incident spread quickly on social media, with many expressing outrage while others suggesting it was a hoax after police were unable to find videotape of the attack Smollett said he sustained.

"I am working with authorities and have been 100 percent factual and consistent on every level," Smollett said in the statement.


Smollett and his manager have both told police they were on the phone together when the actor, an openly gay African-American who plays a gay character on "Empire," was accosted on a street early on Tuesday by two men shouting racial and homophobic slurs.


Police said they sought phone records to independently verify that Smollett was on the phone at the time with his manager, who reportedly told police he heard the attackers saying "This is MAGA country," an apparent reference to President Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan.

"Cellphone records were not provided to investigators when asked," Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in an email to Reuters. "The victim didn't provide them."

But he also said the police had "no reason to doubt" the accounts of both Smollett and his manager that they were on the phone together at the time of the alleged attack.

In a later email, another police spokesman, Officer Michael Carroll, said: "The victim is working with police as we investigate the circumstances of the incident."

Questions raised about the veracity of his account were troubling, Smollett said in his statement, especially since "these types of cowardly attacks are happening to my sisters, brothers and non-gender-conforming siblings daily."

On Friday evening, several dozen people attended a rally for Smollett in New York organised by gay rights groups in Manhattan's Grand Army Plaza, near Central Park.

