County Judge Orders Google To Hand Over A Year Of Jussie Smollett’s Data In New Investigation
Anna
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It seems the Jussie Smollett hate hoax case ain’t quite over yet.
According to The Chicago Tribune, a Cook County judge has ordered Google to furnish authorities with all of Jussie Smollett’s data from the last year as special prosecutors move forward in investigating the alleged hate crime hoax.
“The warrants, filed last month in Circuit Court, sought a trove of documentation from Smollett and his manager’s Google accounts — not just emails but also drafted and deleted messages; any files in their Google Drive cloud storage services; any Google Voice texts, calls and contacts; search and web browsing history; and location data,” the Tribune reports.
The warrants ask for all of Smollett’s data from November 2018 through November 2019, although the key events in the alleged hoax occurred between late January and late March of 2019.
The Tribune expects that special prosecutor Dan Webb could be looking for any incriminating remarks from Smollett or his manager, especially in the months after State Attorney Kim Foxx suddenly dropped all charges against the actor just weeks after his indictment.
This, of course, led the “Empire” star to claim complete innocence of all claims that he had staged the supposed hate crime he claimed to have experienced, in which two white men strangled him with a makeshift noose, poured bleach on him, and shouted racist and pro-Trump statements at him.
Except, you know, his two accomplices, whom he allegedly paid by check, eventually confessed to the crime and sued him for defamation. That’s kind of an important detail.
At the time, Smollett was accused of staging the attack because he was dissatisfied with his salary from “Empire.”
“Jussie Smollett took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career,” Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at the time.
“I’m left hanging my head and asking why,” Johnson continued. “Why would anyone, especially an African-American man, use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations? How could someone look at the hatred and suffering associated with that symbol and see an opportunity to manipulate that symbol to further his own public profile? How can an individual who’s been embraced by the city of Chicago turn around and slap everyone in this city in the face by making these false claims?”
While the left will certainly clamor that demanding Smollett’s private Google data is somehow a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights to be secure in his “papers and effects,” I’d say the stack of evidence that Jussie staged his own “attack” is probable cause enough, wouldn’t you?
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