The headline Tuesday in the liberal Daily Beast said it all: “Jussie Smollett Got Totally Nailed in His Cross-Examination.”
The piece was brutal, cataloguing all the ways in which the “Empire” star, who claims he was attacked in a hate crime by two men who allegedly yelled “this is MAGA country”, mucked up when he took the stand in his trial for allegedly lying to police.
And experts agree, according to a new report by Fox News.
“Smollett testifying in his own defense is one of two things, or maybe both: a narcissistic criminal defendant who is doubling down on his charged lies to law enforcement or defense attorneys who know they are way behind and are throwing a low probability Hail Mary to try to get their client off,” former U.S. attorney Neama Rahmani, who is not involved with Smollett’s case, told Fox News Digital.
“Either way, Smollett’s story was a bizarre attempt at forcing a square peg into a round hole by offering every possible explanation for the state’s digital evidence except the most obvious one: that he is guilty. In the unlikely event he is acquitted, Smollett’s decision was a genius move. But it is far more likely that the jury sees through his ruse and Smollett is convicted. If so, the judge may sentence him to prison time for obstructing justice and perjuring himself on the witness stand,” he said.
Another lawyer said the actor’s testimony was “an unparalleled disaster,” adding that Smollett not only “hurt his case,” but also “went beyond and made the prosecutor’s case” while on the stand.
“His story is so unbelievable and in the face of the evidence that no reasonable jury is ever going to buy it,” attorney James White said of Smollett’s testimony, which included admission that he did drugs with Bola Osundairo — who prosecutors say, along with his brother, actually perpetrated the fake attack. “I think that he absolutely buried himself to the extent he wasn’t already buried,” White said.
White said Smollett’s testimony “was almost indecipherable trying to make sense of it, and I just don’t see how any reasonable jury is going to find any truth in anything he said.” And he also said Smollett never should have even testified.
“The real issue of the real story here is why was he even up there taking the stand?” White said. “So for me, the million-dollar question, which really hasn’t played out during the course of the trial to the extent that I’ve seen is, did his attorneys try to stop this? Or were they a part of this plan? Because if it’s the latter, that’s a problem.”
“To go up in international media coverage and do what he did if it was sanctioned by his counsel, that’s concerning to me. I don’t think that it’s anything that will reverse convictions or anything to that degree, but it’s concerning,” he said.