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Google PlayWhile Taraji P. Henson has called for Jussie Smollett to be released from jail, Freddie Gibbs has taken the opposite stance.
“Capitol rioters have been getting shorter sentences than Jussie Smollett—do you think that’s fair or no?” a TMZ paparazzo asked Gibbs in the clip above.
“I think the Capitol rioters should go to jail and Jussie Smollett should go to jail, too, man. … Free Jussie Smollet in about three years,” Gibbs said. He went on to add, “Capitol rioters, fuck y’all n***as. Jussie Smollett, fuck you too, go to jail. … He did that bullshit, he should go to jail—just like bitches that fake rape should go to jail, he fake a hate crime, he should go to jail. Fuck Jussie Smollett.” The Alfredo artist then revised his recommended sentence, wrapping with, “Free Jussie Smollett in five years.”
Gibbs was acquitted in September 2016 on charges of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in an alleged incident in Austria the year before. He was arrested in France on tour and released on bail. Confirming the news of his acquittal, Gibbs’ attorney told Complex “nothing has changed” since the “actual facts” always showed Freddie “was and is 100 percent innocent.”
“It is now self-evident he was wrongly accused,” read lawyer Theodore Simon’s 2016 statement on Gibbs. “The trial has confirmed our belief that after a searching and complete investigation and trial the true and actual facts would be revealed—that there always was an absence of any scientific, physical, or credible evidence that would warrant in any way such an accusation.”
The 39-year-old Smollett is incarcerated in Chicago after he was sentenced to five months in jail. The sentencing came after he was found guilty on five felony counts in connection to staging a hate crime in 2019.
The actor’s sister Jurnee Smollett has called to have him released. She wrote on Instagram, “Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly five times the rate of White Americans. Jussie is innocent. And…you don’t have to believe in his innocence to believe he should be free.”
Henson demanded her former Empire co-star be freed over the weekend, when she also brought up the injustice surrounding Emmett Till’s murder.
“I am not here to debate you on his innocence but we can agree that the punishment does not fit the crime,” she said. “Emmett Till was brutally beat and ultimately murdered because of a lie and none of the people involved with his demise spent one day in jail…”
Indya Moore and Kendrick Sampson have also called for Smollett to be released.
