Second brother who alleges he helped Smollett stage a phony hate crime against himself takes witness stand at actor’s trial

CHICAGO — The second of the two brothers who accuse Jussie Smollett of staging a fake hate crime against himself with their help took the witness stand Thursday, describing how he says the actor recruited him for the phony attack.

Olabinjo Osundairo, a former stand-in on Smollett’s show, “Empire,” said he was out getting mail at his apartment when his brother Abimbola and Smollett pulled up in Smollett’s Mercedes on the afternoon of Jan. 25, 2019.

The actor pulled him aside and asked, “Can I trust you?”

Of course you can, Olabinjo said he responded.

Olabinjo’s testimony about Smollet’s plan mirrored that of his brother, whose testimony ended earlier Thursday. He told jurors that Smollett “said he would want us to yell out racial and homophobic slurs at him” during the attack, which the actor believed would be captured on a police surveillance camera.

“He wanted us to say, ‘Aren’t you that Empire (homophobic slur) (racial slur)?’ and ‘This is MAGA country,’” he said.

On the way to a “dry run” of the fake attack on Jan. 27, Olabinjo said, Smollett got more specific about their roles: “For me, he wanted me to put the noose around his neck and pour bleach on him, while my brother hit him and put the bruise on his face.”

Smollett asked Abimbola to do the hitting because “He didn’t think that I would be able to hold my punches back,” said Olabinjo, whose ripped physique was shown to the jury through a shirtless photo of him on the “Empire” set.

The cross-examination of Abimbola Osundairo got off to a dramatic start Thursday morning with the defense suggesting he was secretly dating Smollett — or at least used the “sexual tension” between him and the actor to advance his own career.

From the stand, Abimbola Osundairo strongly denied that their relationship was romantic, and said he did not believe Smollett had any kind of crush on him.

Abimbola Osundairo testified earlier this week that Smollett instructed him and his brother Olabinjo to fake a hate crime attack on him in January 2019. The case spiraled into international controversy and confusion when Smollett was charged with falsely reporting the attack to police.

Abimbola Osundairo testified with a straight face throughout, showing little emotion as the defense peppered him with questions. Didn’t he get a new trainer right after the incident? Has he been shopping around book deals? Didn’t he say that he wouldn’t testify if Smollett gave him $1 million? No, no, and no, Osundairo said.

Only once did Osundairo crack a smile: When Allen asked him whether he had considered, while walking around in the bitter cold at 1:30 a.m., he thought about just scrapping the plan and going home.

“I did, yeah,” he said.

But you really wanted to carry out this attack on Smollett, Allen said.

“Fake attack,” Abimbola Osundairo said.

After the allegedly phony attack, Abimbola Osundairo and his brother flew to Nigeria. While they were there, they searched online to see if anything had made the news. He was curious, he testified.

“About what?” Allen asked. “You were there, right?”

“Media attention,” Osundairo answered. “Jussie wanted it. He got what he wanted.”

In opening statements Monday, Smollett’s defense painted the Osundairos as criminals and liars who may have attacked Smollett out of homophobic tendencies. And cross-examination by defense attorney Shay Allen hit many of those points. He tried to question Abimbola Osundairo, who is of Nigerian descent, about homophobia in Nigerian culture, to prosecutors’ repeated objections.

And in a made-for-TV moment, Allen asked Abimbola Osundairo: “When did you and Jussie start dating?”

“What?” Osundairo said. “We were never dating.”

The two men had sometimes gone to a bathhouse in Boystown together, Abimbola Osundairo testified on direct examination Wednesday, but said he was unsure whether it was a gay bathhouse.

“Were you using the sexual tension between you to progress your acting career?” Allen asked Thursday.

“I didn’t know there was sexual tension,” Abimbola Osundairo replied.

Over more than four hours of questioning by prosecutors Wednesday, Abimbola Osundairo walked jurors through the planning and execution of the attack in minute detail, including Smollett’s request that Osundairo and his brother “fake beat him up” because he felt his security on the “Empire” set wasn’t being taken seriously.

The plan culminated, Abimbola Osundairo said, when he and his brother Olabinjo spotted Smollett near his Streeterville apartment around 2 a.m. and, as planned, sprang into action.

“I said, ‘Hey, aren’t you that Empire (homophobic slur)?’ and we said the other words, and my brother said, ‘This is MAGA country,’” Osundairo testified. “That’s when I proceeded to punch him in the face and tussle ... I threw him to the ground, put the bruise on his face, then I saw some car lights and then ran away.”

Smollett faces six felony counts of giving a false report to police. The actor, who is Black and gay, told officers he was attacked by two people who yelled racist and homophobic slurs, poured bleach on him, and tied a rope around his neck like a noose. The Osundairos, however, told police that Smollett recruited them to stage the attack, turning Smollett from victim to suspect.

Smollett’s lead attorney Nenye Uche, has been barred from questioning either brother. In one of the case’s many odd wrinkles, after Uche signed on to the case earlier this year, the Osundairos claimed they had spoken with him about possibly representing them in the early days of the Smollett matter.

Uche strenuously denied that assertion, but prosecutors argued he should be kicked off the case due to a conflict of interest. After a lengthy closed-door hearing, Judge James Linn said Uche could continue to represent Smollett — but could not cross-examine the brothers.

____