A spokesman for Jussie Smollett maintained that the actor is innocent in a statement Tuesday, responding to the city of Chicago's recent court filing in a lawsuit seeking more than $130,000 for reimbursement of investigative costs.
"Regardless of what is said by the city, every iota of information Jussie Smollett has stated has been fully corroborated by the police documents," a spokesman said in a statement.
"Not documents from his PR or legal team but documents generated by the very people who continuously claim it as fact that he is guilty," the statement continued. "But this requires people to look at the actual evidence which nobody seems to want to do."
Smollett's spokesman was referring to a document the city of Chicago filed Monday in U.S. District Court in response to the actor's motion to dismiss a lawsuit the city filed against him in April, seeking funds for investigating what officials say was a phony racist, anti-gay attack that Smollett staged.
The city said Monday that the Chicago Police Department incurred "commensurate costs" after Smollett filed a police report.
"The CPD investigation and commensurate costs were therefore the natural and foreseeable result of Defendant’s claim that he was the victim of a heinous hate crime," the city's filing reads.
In March, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel's law chief sent Smollett a letter demanding he pay $130,106 — plus 15 cents — within seven days.
A special prosecutor was named on Aug. 23 to investigate the alleged hoax.
Cook County Judge Michael Toomin tapped former federal prosecutor Dan Webb for the position after ruling in June, based on a petition from a retired judge, that one was necessary in the case.
Webb is the former U.S. attorney who led the "Operation Greylord" investigations into judicial corruption in Cook County, and is currently the co-executive chairman of Winston & Strawn LLP, according to his bio on the law firm's website.
The office of Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx charged Smollett in February with 16 counts of disorderly conduct for purportedly orchestrating the incident the previous month.
A month later, prosecutors dropped all charges with little explanation.
