CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin confronted Jussie Smollett’s attorney Tina Glandian on AC360 on Wednesday night over the controversy involving the dropping of 16 felony charges against Smollett for faking a hate crime.
Toobin asked Glandian: “Does your client plan to apologize to the actual victims of hate crimes who will now be disbelieved because of your client’s ridiculous stunt here?”
Replied Glandian: “I completely disagree with your categorization this is a ridiculous stunt. Again, he’s not been convicted of any crimes. It is unbelievable to me the amount of conviction in his guilt when prior to him ever stepping foot inside the courthouse, and now the 16 counts were dismissed against him by the state attorney’s office, and such a high profile matter and the fact that people still call it—call this a ridiculous stunt is actually very offensive to me.”
Glandian then pulled a switcheroo: “The only person who should be apologizing is the mayor and the city of Chicago. That’s who should apologize to the victims of hate crimes who will now hesitate to come forward because they don’t want to be charged with 16 counts themselves.”
Glandian was also grilled by Cooper on why his client wouldn’t recognize the two brothers whom Smollett allegedly paid to stage the attack and why they haven’t been charged with anything.
“So, he knew this guy for a year and a half, they’d trained together, they’d socialized together. If this guy is punching him in the face and saying things to him, how is it possible he could not recognize this guy?”
Glandian argued that Smollett would not have recognized the brothers, but did not bring up something she said on the Today show on Thursday morning.
In that interview, Glandian said that the brothers may have been wearing “whiteface.”
“Well, you know, I mean, I think there’s — obviously, you can disguise that. You can put makeup on. There is, interestingly enough, a video. You know, I think police had minimal investigation in this case, it took me only five minutes to Google. You know, I was looking up the brothers, and one of the videos that showed up actually was of the brothers in whiteface doing a joker monologue with white makeup on him. So, it’s not — it’s not implausible.”
