The police initially investigated the incident as a possible hate crime and made arrests, but later came to doubt Smollett’s account. He was accused of staging the incident, arrested and indicted, only to have prosecutors unexpectedly drop the charges Tuesday.
Here are some key questions about where the affair stands now.
Are federal authorities investigating the matter now?
One aspect of the case is known to be in federal hands: a threatening letter mailed to Smollett in the weeks before the Jan. 29 incident that he reported as an attack.
Prosecutors have said the FBI, which has jurisdiction over crimes committed using the mail, was conducting a forensic analysis of the letter. It came in an envelope with “MAGA” written in the left corner, an apparent reference to President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” It also contained white powder; tests found it to be a painkilling drug. It is not clear whether the analysis has been completed.
A law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Thursday that the FBI had previously opened a hate crime investigation while assisting local authorities with the case. It was unclear whether that investigation remained open or whether the FBI had taken any additional steps.
On Thursday morning, Trump suggested on Twitter that there could be wider federal involvement: “F.B.I. & DOJ to review the outrageous Jussie Smollett case in Chicago. It is an embarrassment to our Nation!”
The FBI declined to comment about a possible investigation.
The mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, reacted angrily to Trump’s Twitter message. Noting that the president had stirred controversy in 2017 with his response to the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Emanuel said on WGN radio that Trump should “just sit this one out.”
The mayor is unhappy, but is there anything the City of Chicago can do now?
The city’s Law Department sent Smollet a letter Thursday demanding “immediate payment” of more than $130,000 — the cost of overtime for more than two dozen detectives and police officers who investigated the case.
The city, the letter says, takes “seriously those who make false statements to the police, thereby diverting resources from other investigations and undermining the criminal justice system.”
The Law Department said its demand for the payment — precisely $130,106.15 — is permitted by a city ordinance that allows the city to be reimbursed for costs in cases in which people have made false statements.
Bill McCaffrey, a spokesman for the Law Department, said the city had used the ordinance a number of times before, including when a doctor stabbed himself in 2011, but told police that he had been attacked.
The city might take further legal action if it does not receive payment within seven days, the letter said.
Why did Chicago’s top prosecutor, Kimberly Foxx, recuse herself from the Smollett case?
Foxx, who promised to be a reformer when she was elected state’s attorney for Cook County in 2016, took herself off the case in February, saying that she had had conversations about the incident with a relative of Smollett. She also exchanged emails with Tina Tchen, a prominent Chicago lawyer and former aide to Michelle Obama. Tchen has said she sought to put Foxx in touch with the Smollett family over the family’s concerns about how the incident was being portrayed in public.
At the urging of a Smollett relative, Foxx also contacted Eddie T. Johnson, the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, and suggested that the FBI take over the investigation.
What evidence indicated to the police that Smollett had staged the attack?
The police say Smollett hired two brothers to stage an assault on him, and gave them a check for $3,500, with the promise of another $500 later. The police have a copy of the check, surveillance video of the brothers’ movements before the attack, and phone records showing that they spoke with Smollett an hour before the incident, and then again an hour afterward.
In a document prepared for a bail hearing, prosecutors said they also had video of the brothers at the scene, text messages with Smollett, and the brothers’ testimony relating how Smollett had recruited them and how he had visited the scene of the incident with them the night before to prepare.
One unusual clue was an empty bottle of El Yucateco hot sauce, found at the scene more than a week after the incident. According to the police investigative report, detectives showed it to one of the brothers, who said “that it appeared to be the bottle he filled with bleach and poured on Smollett” during the incident.
What do the authorities say was Smollett’s motive for staging the incident?
The police say that Smollett was upset over his pay for his role in “Empire,” and was seeking publicity. His salary has not been made public; it has been estimated in media reports at $65,000 to $100,000 an episode.
“The stunt was orchestrated by Smollett because he was dissatisfied with his salary,” Johnson, the police superintendent, told reporters in February. “So he concocted a story about being attacked.”
What did Smollett say took place?
At roughly 2 a.m. on Jan. 29, Smollett told the police, he was attacked by two masked men on a sidewalk near his home in an affluent neighborhood of downtown Chicago, as he was returning from a walk to pick up food at a nearby Subway sandwich shop. He said the two men yelled homophobic and racial slurs at him, slipped a rope around his neck and poured a chemical substance on him. Smollett, who is black and gay, told the police that the men had yelled, “This is MAGA country.”
Smollett has maintained throughout the affair, and said again Tuesday after the charges against him were dropped, that he had told the police the truth.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.