Cook County, Illinois, prosecutors dropped 16 felony charges against left-wing Hollywood actor Jussie Smollett on Tuesday based on his prior record of community service.
That record reportedly consisted of 18 hours’ volunteering for Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition on Saturday and Monday.
TMZ.com reported:
Jussie Smollett logged a total of 18 hours of community service over 2 days — with Jesse Jackson’s organization, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition — and that was enough to satisfy prosecutors in Chicago.
Honchos at Rainbow PUSH — a civil and human rights organization — tell us, Jussie volunteered for the first time Saturday, putting in 8 hours from 10 AM to 6 PM. He just completed another 10 hours on Monday.
We’re told Jussie’s “service” included stuffing membership envelopes, working in the group’s bookstore to sell merchandise … and critiquing its Saturday broadcast. We’re told he helped them with camera angles, and also worked with the music director on a plan to build the choir.
TMZ noted that the organization regarded Smollett’s work as volunteering, not community service to atone for any crime.
The Chicago Tribune also published letters Tuesday from The Black AIDS Institute, Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition, and the City Lights Orchestra detailing the former Empire actor’s “service.”
The letter from the Rainbow PUSH Coalition noted: “We are grateful for the opportunity to work with such a talented and humble personality.” The Black AIDS Institute and the City Lights Orchestra detailed Smollett’s past work for the organization but not any particular work in the recent past.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.