Netflix’s Jussie Smollett Documentary ‘The Truth About Jussie Smollett’ Alleges Police May Have Tampered with Evidence

Over six years later, the case of Empire actor Jussie Smollett’s alleged attack is once again in the news, thanks to the new Netflix documentary, The Truth About Jussie Smollett?, which began streaming today. The documentary raises more questions than it answers, but may earn Smollett some more supporters, thanks to a bombshell allegation that the Chicago police may have tampered with surveillance video evidence in Smollett’s case.

Smollett himself is featured in the documentary—directed by Gagan Rehill, and produced by Tom Sheahan and Tim Wardle via RAW Productions—and vehemently maintains his innocence. According to Smollett, in January 2019, he was attacked by two masked, white men in Chicago in the middle of the night. Smollett said the men knew who he was, spewed racial and homophobic slurs, referenced “MAGA country,” attacked him, and put a rope noose around his neck. Smollett reported the incident to the Chicago police, who investigated it as a hate crime. However, during the investigation, authorities began to publicly state they doubted Smollett’s story. Eventually, the police arrested brothers Abimbola “Bola” Osundairo and Olabinjo “Ola” Osundairo, who claimed Smollett hired them to stage the attack. Smollett was indicted for filing a false police report and convicted on five felony counts in 2021. Last year, in November 2024, the Supreme Court of Illinois overturned Smollett’s conviction.

The first hour of the documentary is spent rehashing Smollett’s case, from him reporting the incident to his eventual conviction. In addition to Smollett himself, participants featured in the documentary include former chief of detectives of Chicago police Melissa Staples, former superintendent of Chicago police Eddie Johnson, and the Osundairo brothers, who build their case that Smollett lied. But the last half-hour of the film pivots, and instead features participants who come to Smollett’s defense and invite viewers to question the police’s narrative. Because according to freelance investigative journalist Chelli Stanley, there are things that don’t add up.

The Nigerian-born Osundairo brothers—who are both Black men—claim they were the two figures seen on security footage moments before Smollett’s alleged attack. But two witnesses in Smollett’s case claim to have seen a white man in the vicinity just before the alleged attack.

One of those witnesses, Anthony Moore—a security guard working the night shift at a hotel adjacent to the site of the alleged crime—says he saw a masked white man run just before the alleged incident, and that he pointed a flashlight at the man as he passed. Moore said was pressured by police, when giving his statement in February 2019, to say it was possible the man could have been Black. Moore remained adamant that the masked man was white, which would corroborate Smollett’s claims.

Chelli Stanley requested the security footage of the hotel where Moore worked, and when she finally received it, she claimed a vital 10 seconds of footage was missing. “Just as Anthony Moore opens the door to go outside, the video jumps ahead,” Stanley says in the documentary. Viewers can see for themselves in the documentary that the security footage jolts, and the time on the video jumps ahead by 10 seconds.

“It erases the guy who Anthony Moore say is white and wearing a black face mask, running by him,” Stanley says. “It misses Moore shining the flashlight in his face. I wrote to [the Chicago police] immediately and said ‘Please send me those 10 seconds.’ But they didn’t give it to me. Why did they take it out? You know, if they did. Because, maybe you could see that the guy was white.”

Stanley goes on to suggest that, perhaps, the police pressured the Osundairo brothers into a false confession. Police reports reveal authorities found several illegal firearms in the Osundairo brothers’ home. Ola Osundairo was already a convicted felon, and was barred from owning any firearms—so the police had leverage over him, and possibly used that to broker a deal. Both police featured in the documentary, Johnson and Staples, deny this allegation.

Another security footage video, obtained by Stanley via a Freedom of Information Act request, is well-lit, and shows one of the suspects in the case near the scene and time of the alleged incident, unmasked. The documentary ends with various documentary subjects struggling to identify whether the suspect in the video is white or Black. The Osundairo brothers claim it is a video of themselves.