Nigerian brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo who were said to have assaulted actor, Jussie Smollett in what the police called a staged hate crime
Nigerian brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo who were said to have assaulted actor, Jussie Smollett in what the police called a staged hate crime, have filed a federal defamation lawsuit against the entertainer’s legal team. The brothers said in the lawsuit that Mr. Smollett, an actor on “Empire,” orchestrated the fake attack against himself earlier this year and that two of the actor’s lawyers, Mark Geragos and Tina Glandian, then lied repeatedly about what happened.
“He wanted his employer and the public to notice and appreciate him as a successful black, openly gay actor. So, Mr. Smollett directed every aspect of the attack, including the location and the noose,” the law suit said.
The suit also alleges that Geragos and his firm continued to say publicly in widely reported statements that the brothers “led a criminally homophobic, racist and violent attack against Mr. Smollett,” even though they knew that wasn’t true.
The Osundairo brothers’ lawyers framed the lawsuit as a way of restoring their reputations. They said the brothers, who grew up in Chicago, played college football and sometimes had minor acting jobs, had struggled to find work in recent weeks and had been harassed by reporters.
Even though Smollett, who is black and gay, maintains that the attack wasn’t staged, police allege that Smollett paid the brothers to help him stage a Jan. 29 attack in which he said two masked men beat him, hurled racist and homophobic slurs at him, doused him with some sort of chemical substance and looped a rope around his neck.
