The City Of Chicago Is Moving Forward With Plans To Sue Jussie Smollett For Failing To Pay His $130,000 Bill
The deadline for Jussie Smollett to march his ass into Rahm Emanuel‘s office, wearing his Matrix sunglasses, and plop a bag filled with $130,106 crumpled up dollar bills onto his desk has passed. So the city is suing. Last week Rahm issued Jussie an invoice that might have read “for sundry chicanery” and asked that he reimburse the City of Chicago for the costs it incurred investigating what they think was a fake attack. The deadline for repayment was last night, and according to Deadline, ain’t nobody seen hide nor hair of Jussie yet.
Deadline reports:
“Mr. Smollett has refused to reimburse the City of Chicago for the cost of police overtime spent investigating his false police report on January 29, 2019, a spokesperson of the Midwestern metropolis said Thursday as it became EOD in Chicago. “The Law Department is now drafting a civil complaint that will be filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County. Once it is filed, the Law Department will send a courtesy copy of the complaint to Mr. Smollett’s L.A. based legal team.”
In failing to pay the initial request in a timely manner, Jussie could now be on the hook for as much as $390,000 which is “three times the original amount plus court and attorney costs”. Jussie and his team had no comment about the possible lawsuit, but if he did it would probably be something like “run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the TV’s Jamal Lyon. You know, Cookie’s boy!”. And for the time being, that’s still true.
Taraji P. Henson was on The View and in between hyping her new movie Green Book 2020 (alternate title The Best Of Enemies), she stated that as far as she knows, Jussie still has a job on Empire. When asked if he was going to return for season 6 (he was already written out of the final 2 episodes of the current season), Taraji responded “yes, I haven’t heard anything else”. She also stated that she talks to him all the time (audience: GASP!) and that he’s doing well. However, Deadline is not so sure.
Despite the claims of the actor who portrays Cookie Lyon, sources tell me, as I reported on March 27, that it still looks like Smollett will not be back but the “absolute final decision” has not yet been made.
If I ruled the world, I’d just go ahead and cancel Empire all together (which still might happen, we’ll know next month), and then I’d get Jussie and Rahm together and make them sit down with Oprah so we can get to bottom of this mess, once and for all.
Pic: Wenn.com