CHICAGO (CelebrityAccess) — Former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett finds himself in legal hot water again after a special grand jury in Cook County indicted him on new charges related to a purported hate crime he was alleged to have orchestrated against himself last year.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Smollett was indicted on six counts of disorderly conduct and are nearly identical to charges that were previously brought against him and later dropped by Cook county prosecutors last year.
“Jussie Smollett planned and participated in a staged hate crime attack, and thereafter made numerous false statements to Chicago Police Department officers on multiple occasions, reporting a heinous hate crime that he, in fact, knew had not occurred,” Webb said in a news release.\
Special prosecutor Dan Webb, who was appointed to review the case last year, alleged that Smollett filed four separate false police reports when reporting the attack.
Smollett became a controversial figure last January when he claimed that he was attacked by two men who hurled homophobic and racist comments at him.
A subsequent police investigation concluded that Smollett had planned and coordinated the attack and alleged that he had filed false police reports in relation to the purported assault.
However, a sixteen count felony indictment against Smollett was controversially dropped by State’s Attorney Kim Foxx after the actor agreed to forfeit a $10,000 bond and performed 15 hours of community service. He was not required to admit his guilt in the deal.
In his statement on Tuesday, Webb said the revived charges against Smollett were “in the interest of justice.”
