The White House has hit back fiercely against the Jussie Smollett hoax, angered that the Democrats used it to attack President Trump and his supporters.
Speaking on “Fox & Friends” Friday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders defended President Trump’s tweet on Thursday attacking Jussie Smollett for all the damage his hoax “hate crime” caused.
The president tweeted, “@JussieSmollett – what about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments!? #MAGA“
When asked why President Trump addressed the Smollett situation that way, Sanders said that it was to highlight the fact that so many prominent politicians and media figures used the Smollett hoax to attack his presidency.
“There were so many people including a lot of leadership from the Democrat party from Nancy Pelosi, Cory Booker, and a number of others, mostly those that are running for president, quickly came out and attacked the president — blamed the president,” Sanders said.
Sanders went on to compare the Smollett hoax to the Covington Catholic schoolboys fiasco. “In fact, as we learn more it certainly seems like the only person to blame in this case is Smollett and it’s another sad example of people so quick to want to attack and come after this president, much like you saw with the Covington kids and certainly with this case as well, and the president is pushing back,” she said.
Now that the more and more evidence indicates Smollett staged the “hate crime” against him, some conservatives fear that the Left will start pushing conspiracy theories to smear the Chicago PD. Former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said on Friday that Smollett’s lawyers will likely go in that direction if he wants to maintain his innocence.
“When you have two young men who are giving you a statement, and you can go back and corroborate that statement with all that evidence you just mentioned, in addition to the documentary evidence and the electronic evidence, you’ve got video evidence. You can actually see them moving around, going to the places. That’s very, very powerful to a jury,” Davis said on Fox News. “And so what you find is that, in this system, a defense attorney will attack the only people that they can attack, which is the accusers — the police. And that’s playing itself out. But we’re very used to that, and there’s enough evidence here to move forward without a doubt.”
Davis added that when defense attorneys have none of the facts on their side they tend to attack the “process,” the same method O.J. Simpson’s lawyers used to have him acquitted for murder.
“When defense attorneys don’t have any facts, they go to process. And they’re trying to throw enough smoke up there to establish reasonable doubt in the minds of the perspective jurors. That’s what this is all about,” Davis said. “Ed [Johnson] described this very well yesterday. He called it a despicable crime. When you hear his presentation and the presentation of state’s attorney, there’s almost an embarrassment of evidence here against Smollett.”