Police Acknowledge 'Developments' in Jussie Smollett Case — But Won't Address Speculation
Chicago police are refusing to comment on a number of recent reports claiming that authorities believe Jussie Smollett orchestrated the Jan. 29 apparent hate attack on himself.
“While we are not in a position to confirm, deny or comment on the validity of what’s been unofficially released, there are some developments in this investigation,” Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement released on Sunday afternoon via Twitter.
The spokesman went on to write that “detectives have some follow-ups to complete which include speaking to the individual who reported the incident.”
The police statement was released one day after multiple outlets reported that the two brothers who were arrested and released without charges in the case have reportedly claimed that the Empire star paid them to stage the incident.
According to CBS Evening News, a police source told the outlet on Saturday that the brothers said Smollett paid them to participate in the alleged incident and purchase the rope that was found around the star’s neck.
CNN also reported on Saturday that two Chicago police sources said investigators believe Smollett paid the men in exchange for carrying out the attack and the men are now fully cooperating with authorities.
“We can confirm that the information received from the individuals questioned by police earlier in the Empire case has in fact shifted the trajectory of the investigation,” Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement on Saturday, according to the Associated Press. “We’ve reached out to the Empire cast member’s attorney to request a follow-up interview.”
“Detectives have reached out to his attorneys hoping to speak with him again,” Chicago police spokesman Thomas J. Ahern later said in a statement to PEOPLE.
RELATED: ‘Devastated’ Jussie Smollett Denies Orchestrating Attack After Police Say Case Has ‘Shifted’
Smollett responded to the reports in a statement released by his attorneys on Saturday. “As a victim of a hate crime who has cooperated with the police investigation, Jussie Smollett is angered and devastated by recent reports that the perpetrators are individuals he is familiar with. He has now been further victimized by claims attributed to these alleged perpetrators that Jussie played a role in his own attack,” Smollett’s lawyers said. “Nothing is further from the truth and anyone claiming otherwise is lying.”
“One of these purported suspects was Jussie’s personal trainer who he hired to ready him physically for a music video,” the statement continues. “It is impossible to believe that this person could have played a role in the crime against Jussie or would falsely claim Jussie’s complicity.”
“Jussie and his attorneys anticipate being further updated by the Chicago Police Department on the status of the investigation and will continue to cooperate,” Smollett’s attorneys added. “At the present time, Jussie and his attorneys have no inclination to respond to ‘unnamed’ sources inside of the investigation, but will continue discussions through official channels.”
A rep for Fox, which airs Empire, had no comment, while the brothers’ attorney did not immediately return PEOPLE’s request for comment.
On Friday evening, Guglielmi said on Twitter that the two brothers who had previously been arrested were released after being called in for questioning by authorities.
“Due to new evidence as a result of today’s interrogations, the individuals questioned by police in the Empire case have now been released without charging,” he tweeted.
“Detectives have additional investigative work to complete,” Guglielmi added.
A spokeswoman previously told PEOPLE the pair was arrested Wednesday evening. Because they were not charged, police withheld identifying information about them.
The police spokeswoman also confirmed the suspects are the same people as those previously identified as persons of interest.
Jussie Smollett and Empire costar Terrence Howard
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An attorney for the men, Gloria Schmidt, told CBS Chicago on Thursday that the men know Smollett from working on Empire and go to the same gym on occasion. Schmidt did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Officials also recently denied reports that the attack on Smollett was staged.
“While we haven’t found any video documenting the alleged attack, there is also no evidence to say that this is a hoax,” Guglielmi said in a statement on Friday. “The alleged victim is being cooperative at this time and continues to be treated as a victim, not a suspect.”
Responding to the claims, 20th Century Fox Television and Fox Entertainment also released a statement on Thursday, writing, “The idea that Jussie Smollett has been, or would be, written off of Empire is patently ridiculous,” the statement said, adding, “He remains a core player on this very successful series and we continue to stand behind him.”
Smollett was also brought in for questioning on Thursday.
RELATED VIDEO: Jussie Smollett Breaks Down Over Fears His Apparent Hate Crime Attackers Will Never Be Found
At around 2 a.m. in Chicago on Jan. 29, Smollett transported himself to a doctor after he said he was the victim of an apparent hate crime.
“Two unknown offenders approached him and gained his attention by yelling out racial and homophobic slurs towards him,” the statement continued. “The offenders began to batter the victim with their hands about the face and poured an unknown chemical substance on the victim. At some point during the incident, one of the offenders wrapped a rope around the victim’s neck. The offenders fled the scene.”
Early Thursday morning, Smollett appeared on Good Morning America for his first in-depth, televised interview since the incident occurred.
After detailing what occurred and hitting back at critics who have questioned the accuracy of his account, Smollett got emotional, saying he feared that his assailants won’t be found.
The Chicago Police Department had confirmed that Smollett, who is gay, was involved in a “racially-charged assault and battery.” They also released two photos of the persons of interest; however, the images did not show the individuals’ faces.
RELATED: Jussie Smollett Is ‘Happy to Be Back at Work,’ Says Empire Boss: ‘He’s Strong’
“I want that [surveillance] video found so badly for four reasons,” Smollett said in the GMA interview. “Number one, I want them to find the people that did it. Number two, I want them to stop being able to say ‘alleged attack.’ Number three, I want them to see that I fought back. And I want a little gay boy who might watch this to see that I fought back. It does not take anything away from people who are not able to do that, but I fought back. They ran off, I didn’t.”
“Learn to fight. Learn to be a fighter,” he continued, addressing young gay men. “I am not advocating violence at all, so let’s be clear about that. If you’re going to die, fight until you do. If you don’t fight, you have no chance. I have fought for love. I’m an advocate. I respect too much the people — who I am now, one of those people — who have been attacked in any way.”
After being asked if one can heal if their attackers are never found, Smollett broke down.
“I don’t know. Let’s just hope that they are, you know what I’m saying? Let’s not go there yet,” he said, crying.
“I was talking to a friend and I said, ‘I just want them to find them.’ And she said, ‘Sweetie, they’re not going to find them,’ ” he said. “That just made me so angry. So I’m just going to be left here like this? I’m just going to be left here? They get to go free, go about their life, and possibly attack someone else. And I’m here left with the aftermath? That’s not cool to me. That’s not okay.”
Paul Robeson was an unrepentant Stalinist. Rutgers should acknowledge that.
Paul Robeson led an extraordinary life. The son of a runaway slave, he was just the third African American to study at Rutgers University, where he was both an All-American football player and valedictorian. After earning a law degree at Columbia University, he became one of the most popular entertainers in the world, his stirring baritone illuminating Broadway musicals and Shakespearean dramas alike. He was reputed to speak a dozen languages.
Robeson was also, to his dying day, an unrepentant Stalinist.
That fact has been scrupulously avoided by Rutgers as it marks the centenary of his 1919 graduation, a year-long celebration that includes a series of lectures and the renaming of a campus plaza in Robeson’s honor.
The online material promoting the Rutgers festivities includes a biographical article titled “Paul Robeson: Renaissance Man Who Found Injustice.” Artist Nell Irvin Painter, who contributed a portrait for an exhibition commissioned by the university, describes Robeson as a “global activist,” saying, “His unwavering integrity and faith in his efforts is something that I think all artists, and people in general, should value and practice.” A Rutgers news release says that Robeson “joined the chorus of socialists and progressives who were fighting for causes of justice and equality” and that “his activism eventually cost him his livelihood.”
It is true that the U.S. government, out of a combination of racist and anti-communist paranoia, treated Robeson unjustly. The FBI spied on him. His name was stricken from the All-American sports records. His passport was revoked, and he was blacklisted and, unable to perform, forced into penury. He died a broken man. But this only tells part of Robeson’s complicated story.
Like many Americans who visited the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Robeson was entranced by what he saw. That his own country treated black men such as him so abysmally made the superficial equality of the communist system even more alluring. Yet his understandable anger at the United States blinded him to the many injustices of Joseph Stalin’s regime. Asked in an interview with the Daily Worker in 1935 about the execution of “counter-revolutionary terrorists,” Robeson called the policy “justice” and said: “From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot! It is the government’s duty to put down opposition to this really free society with a firm hand.”
Robeson’s opposition to Western imperialism in Africa blinded him to Soviet imperialism in Eastern Europe. In 1949, as the Soviets were erecting their Iron Curtain across the continent, Robeson delivered a speech to the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship in New York. “The Soviet Union is the friend of the African and the West Indian peoples,” he declared. Perhaps. But it was undoubtedly the enemy of the peoples of Eastern Europe.
For his services to the cause of international communism, Robeson won the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952. Several months later, after Stalin died unexpectedly, Robeson delivered a eulogy praising the “deep humanity,” “wise understanding” and “rich and monumental heritage” of the recently departed mass murderer. “Glory to Stalin,” Robeson said. “Forever will his name be honored and beloved in all lands.” For decades, until his death in 1976, Robeson remained an unwavering apologist for the Soviet dictator and the communist cause. Nothing in the ensuing Soviet catalogue of horrors — Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech” exposing the litany of Stalinist crimes, the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, revelations about the gulags — appeared to dampen his admiration.
Robeson had every reason to feel disillusioned about America. But plenty of African American civil rights leaders, no matter how justifiably outraged at the actions of their country, refrained from glorifying foreign despotisms far worse in their treatment of national minorities, as was the Soviet Union.
“It is personally painful to me to realize that so gifted and forceful a man as Robeson should have been tricked by his own bitterness and by a total inability to understand the nature of political power in general, or Communist aims in particular, into missing the point of his own critique,” wrote James Baldwin in 1948.
A brave and eloquent advocate for his own people in the United States, Robeson was simultaneously a defender of the oppression of others abroad, thereby making a mockery of the “universal humanity” for which Rutgers lauds him. The closest the university comes to acknowledging Robeson’s unapologetic Stalinism is to say he was “branded a Communist sympathizer.”
Paul Robeson was a complex man. But so were Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson and many of the other figures in U.S. history whose veneration by colleges and universities we are now (rightly and belatedly) being asked to reappraise in light of their racism, sexism and other manifold human faults. If Robeson is going to be honored — as he absolutely should be — then we ought to honor him forthrightly.
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