“I wouldn’t even mind him being free if he’d had to (a) admit guilt (b) pay large fines, not small ones (3) do meaningful community service (4) be on several years of probation.”

I never thought Smollett would see jail. I did want to see him convicted though. Now that the state attorney has dropped the charges and let this freak walk, free to say he’s entirely innocent, I want to see him imprisoned. And there is still a chance for that. He did send a threat letter to himself with a white powder that turned out be ground up aspirin. That’s a federal crime. Ms. Foxx can’t fix that.

As of February 19th the FBI and US Postal Inspection Service had the letter and it was at a crime lab. I didn’t really care much earlier. Now I care.

Sure, I’ll write a legal brief for you. In my spare time.

Or, perhaps you can do your own research.

But here’s a start, from what is probably one of your favorite sources, the NY Times:

The police say Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. Smollett, and the brothers’ testimony relating how Mr. Smollett had recruited them and how he had visited the scene of the incident with them the night before to prepare.

The check was for training, according to Jussie. But the brothers’ usual fee for that was quite low, 20 to 50 dollars an hour. So that check would have been for something between 70 and 175 hours of training, so the check itself is highly suspicious evidence that tends to corroborate the brothers’ story. There are also cell phone and text messages that are said to have been suspicious in timing. The weather also made his story hard to believe, and in particular the idea that he mistook two black men—men that he knew quite well—for 2 white men he didn’t know is also pretty absurd on the face of it (literally). Remember, he originally described them as white.

The grand jury found enough evidence to indict him on 16 counts. Obviously, we have not seen all the evidence. That’s actually what a trial is for. Perhaps he would have been acquitted, but clearly the evidence was quite persuasive.

When they ended the case, the prosecutors initially made it very clear that the evidence was strong and that weak evidence was not the reason. Then, after they realized how outraged people got at that, they started saying it wasn’t so very strong after all. The whole thing is an absurdity.

Jussie’s story made no sense. The cold. His description of the attackers (listen to this starting around 1:34 and going to around 4:20). They yelled stuff at him, he says. so he definitely heard the voice of at least one and perhaps both. Here’s a video one of the brothers made in which you can hear him speak. It’s hard to believe that Jussie would not have recognized his voice, his body-builder body, and his walk, and it’s almost impossible to believe Smollett would have thought from his voice that he was actually a white MAGA-shouting anti-black bigot.

In addition, Jussie said they wore masks, but he indicates in his video he could see the bridge of the man’s nose. And yet Jussie’s lawyer now says maybe they were wearing whiteface, one of the most bizarre statements of all, although his lawyer’s assertion certainly isn’t what you’d call evidence.

This is another curious statement from Jussie:

I have to acknowledge the lies, and the hate. And it feels like if I had said it was a Muslim, or a Mexican, or someone black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me much more. A lot more,

Some more here:

On the morning of January 25, the documents show, Smollett texted Osundairo: “Might need your help on the down low. You around to meet up and talk face to face?”…

According to the proffer, police have corroborated the meeting and text messages through pod videos and cellular phone tower data of Smollett’s cell phone…

The plan changed when Smollett, who flew to New York City and was due back late on January 28, got delayed because of the weather. Smollett’s plane landed around 12:30 a.m. on January 29 and he called Abel Osundairo a few minutes later to schedule the attack for 2 a.m., according to the documents. The brothers took an Uber from their home, got out, and jumped in a cab to ride to the meeting place. The taxi’s in-car video captures the brothers flagging the cab and riding in the back seat, the documents show.

Smollett returned to his apartment around 1:30 a.m. and left his building about 15 minutes later. Because he was late meeting the Osundairos, they were forced to wait on a nearby bench, which was also captured on video…

Smollett described being punched while his attackers yelled homophobic and racist slurs. He told police there was a camera that had captured the attack on the street and described the primary attacker as “masked,” but that he could see the area around his eyes was white-skinned…

Cell phone records obtained by police show that Smollett continued communicating with the brothers right after the attack, and later when they were in Nigeria and Turkey. When they returned on February 13, the Osundairo brothers were arrested at the airport.

This case does not depend on the uncorroborated word of the brothers.

The security camera tape and the check he sent to the perps. This isn’t that difficult.

In the Smollett case, there was plenty of it [corroborating evidence]

Is there? I don’t see it listed here. I just see prosecutors saying their case was strong, which is what it seemed to be at first

I don’t think Tina Tchen, basically a consigliere for the Obamas, can fix that, though there may be enough Obama holdovers in the FBI and Deep State to do the trick.

But if it comes out Jussie mailed that letter, that’s all she wrote.

I would be very happy to return to that blissful state.

Griffin: I get your cynicism. But I think the yang has flipped to yin. Stuff works until it doesn’t. And I think the Democrat playbook has stopped working — Trump won in 2016, the Kavanaugh attacks failed and so forth.

I don’t expect Foxx and Smollett to be frog-marched to jail, but they will pay an unpleasant price. Partly because neither seems very smart about what they are up to.

I’ve made my call. We’ll see.