The lawyer for the Nigerian brothers at the center of the Jussie Smollett “staged attack” scandal say they are prepared to testify at his trial, but that they will not feel vindicated unless the Empire actor is found guilty of lying to police.
What We Know:
- Smollett was charged on Tuesday with lying to police in a six-count, grand jury indictment which revived the case against him. Earlier last year, he was arrested after claiming to have been the victim of a racist, homophobic attack in Chicago.
- Both brothers, Abel and Ola Osundairo, explained that Smollett had paid them to stage the attack against him and that they went along with it for $3,500, seemingly unaware of the consequential media storm it would spark up. Smollett’s attorneys, over the past year, have accused the brothers of lying.
- On Wednesday, a day after Smollett was charged by a special prosecutor who had been working on the messy case since August, the Osundairo brothers’ attorney Gloria Schmidt Rodriguez told DailyMail neither she nor they were surprised by the indictment.
- Rodriguez went onto say they do not yet feel vindicated of accusations by Smollett’s attorneys that they had made up the “plot” and paying them. They would simply like to see it play out in court.
- Moreover, since their alleged scheme was unraveled by investigators, their acting dreams have been shattered. They cannot find work and no one is hiring them as exercise trainers. The Osundairo brothers have even resorted to the food pantry to survive, their lawyer testified.
“It’s been really hard for them, they’ve tried to kind of jump back into the life they had [and] they couldn’t,” Chicago defense attorney Gloria Schmidt said, according to The Grio.
