A battle over alleged “whiteface” attackers was in full effect this week between legal representatives for actor Jussie Smollett and a lawyer recently employed by the Osundairo brothers.
Attorney Gloria Schmidt told CNN’s Don Lemon Thursday evening that it was “absolutely just atrocious” for Tina Glandian, a lawyer for the “Empire” star, to float “whiteface” theories about Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo.
The two men still maintain that they were paid $3,500 by the actor for a staged attack in Chicago on Jan. 29.
Mr. Smollett faced 16 felony counts for allegedly filing a false police report when prosecutors in Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office dropped all charges Tuesday.
“You can put makeup on,” Ms. Glandian told NBC’s “Today” show Thursday morning regarding Mr. Smollett’s description of his alleged attackers. “There is, actually, interestingly enough a video. You know, I think police did minimal investigation in this case. It took me all of five minutes to Google, you know, I was looking up the brothers and one of the first videos that showed up actually was one of the brothers in whiteface doing a Joker monologue with white makeup on. It’s not implausible.”
The Osundairo brothers are black.
Ms. Schmidt blasted the comments as another way of “giving lawyers a bad name.”
“It’s to distract from the real issues here and by putting out conspiracy theories that, perhaps, my clients were wearing whiteface, it just adds to the ridiculous and the offensiveness of this entire thing,” Ms. Schmidt said.
She told the host that her recent clients spoke up when the “publicity stunt” involving a racial and homophobic “MAGA country” attack got out of hand.
“They never recanted their story. … They did not commit a hate crime; they did not stalk Jussie out and attack him for his sexual orientation or for his race,” she said. “This was completely a publicity stunt that my clients had trusted with their friend, and once this got so big and they saw that this was affecting so many people, they stood up and said we’re not going to be part of this fraud. And that’s what happened and they were committed to doing that.”
Gloria Schmidt, an attorney who worked with the Osundairo brothers, says she agrees with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel that it’s “an embarrassment” that charges against Jussie Smollett were dropped. https://t.co/JzaUWckW5p pic.twitter.com/FF1QAvGVYc
— CNN (@CNN) March 29, 2019
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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