Julie Bosman and Timothy Williams

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. &amp; 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 <a id="63b4c814-5ab7-4b7e-a465-baac409359c5" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/us/jussie-smollett.html">The New York Times</a>.

CHICAGO — Ever since Jussie Smollett, a star of the television series “Empire,” first claimed in January that he was the victim of a bizarre hate crime on a Chicago street, the case has taken one baffling twist after another, attracted wide attention on social media and inflamed passions on all sides.

The Jussie Smollett case: Key questions

An actor who said he was the victim of a bizarre hate crime. A furious mayor who insisted it was all a hoax, nothing more than a desperate grab for money and fame. And a prosecutor who shocked everyone by dropping the case.

Chicago, a city torn by race, class, violence and secrecy, was the ideal setting for the twisty story of Jussie Smollett, the “Empire” actor who this week was cleared of charges that he had staged an attack on himself in order to stir up national attention and, possibly, a raise.

“The story is bizarre from beginning to end,” said Sara Paretsky, the Chicago mystery novelist whose best-selling V.I. Warshawski series is set in the city.

Like so many Chicagoans, she had followed the story from the beginning, and found herself “profoundly depressed” by the decision by the Cook County state’s attorney’s office to drop the charges. Many residents placed blame on Kimberly Foxx, the elected prosecutor, even though she recused herself from the case and handed it to her deputy.

“Every time I think we’ve elected someone who might rise above the corruption that encases Chicago like a wool glove on a hot July day, the electee runs to do something to prove it’s the same old same old,” Paretsky said.

Foxx, in an interview with WBEZ, said she did not make the decision in Smollett’s case. But she added that the decision was not unusual. “Every single day on cases that law enforcement partners work diligently on, there are people who get similar arrangements, people who get diversion, people who get sentences that are probably not what some people would want,” she said.

It was in January when Smollett filed a police report saying he had been attacked while walking downtown by two men who not only put a rope around his neck, but also made racial and homophobic slurs and declared that Chicago was “MAGA country.”

Weeks later, authorities said evidence showed that Smollett, 36, had staged the incident, paying two brothers to attack him. And Tuesday came the most dramatic twist of all: Prosecutors announced abruptly that all charges would be dropped against Smollett.

“Everybody in Chicago is looking for a motive — is it a political connection, is it a family connection?” said Martin Preib, a vice president with the police union in Chicago.

As for the explanation that dropping such charges is routine, Preib remarked: “No one in Chicago is buying it.”

On Wednesday, the confusion of the day before — a whirl of accusations, dropped charges, fiery news conferences and chaotic courthouse scenes — had hardly lifted.

Chicagoans, accustomed to the city’s legendary corruption and everyday graft, said they were sure that something illicit had taken place. They were just unsure what it was.

“The whole story does seem a little odd and now, who knows what to think,” said Tony DeSousa, 55, a construction worker waiting for a train to Midway Airport on Wednesday. “Someone is not being truthful.”

Tisha Bennett James, 39, who was born in Chicago, said nothing surprises her about her hometown and its potential for wrongdoing. “Those with power are not operating within the same system as the rest of us,” she said. “We already know that. Nothing to see here.”

The city is only a few months removed from Edward M. Burke, a councilman for nearly half a century — and until recently, one of the city’s most powerful figures — being charged by federal prosecutors for shaking down business owners.

But if there were still lingering questions about what had happened in the Smollett case, the answers given by officials in Chicago were hardly satisfying.

Joe Magats, the prosecutor who made the decision to drop the charges, said in an interview Tuesday that Smollett was not a threat to public safety and did not have a violent record, two factors that he considered when deciding whether to drop charges.

Magats said that Smollett had agreed to forfeit a $10,000 bond to the city and perform community service, though Smollett’s lawyers said that community service was not part of a deal. A spokeswoman for Magats’ office did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., whose Rainbow PUSH Coalition is based in Chicago, backed Smollett’s account.

“When this crisis first exposed itself, we reached out to him,” Jackson said in an interview. “We called him about it. He came out here and met with me. I prayed with him, heard his concerns and began to counsel. Never involved in the legal because that was not my role.”

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who unleashed an angry tirade after hearing prosecutors had dropped charges, continued to rail Wednesday, appearing on morning television to insist that Smollett “committed a crime here.”

But Patricia Brown Holmes, a lawyer for Smollett, said Wednesday that the Chicago Police Department was engaging in a “smear campaign” against him.

“We are disappointed the local authorities have continued their campaign against Jussie Smollett after the charges against him have been dropped,” she said in a statement. “The facts are clear. The assistant state’s attorney appeared in court and dismissed the charges. Smollett forfeited his bond. The case is closed.”

The rift between city officials and Foxx appeared to be far from healed.

Anthony Guglielmi, a police spokesman, said that Eddie Johnson, the police superintendent, had not been aware of the decision to drop the charges until Tuesday’s court hearing had already concluded. He said that typically Johnson and Foxx speak at least once a day, but they did not have a conversation Tuesday.

Detectives on the case had also not been notified about the decision in advance, even though the police and a team of prosecutors had worked side-by-side in police headquarters for weeks while investigating the case.

The relationship between police and the prosecutors’ office, Guglielmi said, “is like a marriage, and like every marriage, it needs work.”

Smollett was last seen in public Tuesday, when he appeared at the courthouse for a hearing, looking serene. He stood in front of a scrum of reporters, read from handwritten notecards and declared that he had been vindicated.

“I’ve been truthful and consistent on every single level since Day 1,” he said. “This has been an incredibly difficult time, honestly one of the worst of my entire life, but I am a man of faith, and I’m a man that has knowledge of my history, and I would not bring my family, our lives or the movement through a fire like this.”

Anyone wishing to pore over court records for more clues on what occurred would have to face one more twist in this tale: The court file on Smollett’s case has been sealed.

This article originally appeared in <a id="90d75fbb-f51d-4978-beaa-1181fab088df" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/us/jussie-smollett-joe-magats-chicago.html">The New York Times</a>.

Unusual case wraps up in a city used to them, but no one 'is buying it'

CHICAGO — It had all the elements of a suspenseful crime novel. There was a mysterious attack on a shadowy downtown street and a pair of perpetrators who managed to slip away.

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Julie Bosman and Timothy Williams

Articles written by the author

The Jussie Smollett case: Key questions

Unusual case wraps up in a city used to them, but no one 'is buying it'