Past hoax · Filed Oct 16, 2026
Jussie Smollett Hoax
Jussie Smollett was lynched by Trump supporters in the middle of the night.
The claim
Jussie Smollett was lynched by Trump supporters in the middle of the night.
What it was
He hired two brothers to stage the attack. He was convicted.
Timeline
Jan 29, 2019
Smollett reports that two men in MAGA hats beat him and put a noose on him in downtown Chicago.
The next days
CNN and others cover it as a real attack. The brothers he hired later describe staging it.
Mar 2019
Local prosecutors drop the first case. A special prosecutor later brings it back.
Dec 9, 2021
A jury convicts him of lying to police.
Nov 2024
The Illinois Supreme Court throws out the conviction over how the second prosecution was brought. It does not find the attack was real.
What aired
In January 2019 Jussie Smollett told Chicago police that two men in MAGA hats had beaten him, put a noose around his neck, and shouted racial and homophobic slurs on an empty downtown street after midnight. CNN covered it as a real attack and as a sign of the climate. Celebrities and candidates condemned it before any suspect existed.
The record
He had hired two brothers, Abel and Ola Osundairo, to stage the attack. They bought the rope. They rehearsed it. A jury later convicted him of lying to the police. A higher court fight years afterward was about how the case was charged a second time, not about whether the beating on the sidewalk had been real. The brothers’ account of the hire is the record of the night.
Left out
Left out of the first forty-eight hours was every ordinary question: the weather, the cameras, the lack of a suspect who fit, the noose that looked prepared. Also left out, once he was the victim on air, was the possibility that a famous person would invent a hate crime. That possibility turned out to be the case.
Why it stuck
It stuck because it arrived pre-assembled as proof of the Trump era. A Black, gay actor, a noose, a red hat. The costume was perfect. When the costume came off, the original segment had already taught the lesson. The lesson did not depend on the attack being real, which is why it was so easy to air.