Jussie Smollett: Spotting his lies, and his truths

His words reveal it all

Jussie Smollett has been jailed for claiming he was the victim of a hate attack, which he was found to have staged.

ABC World News Now @abcWNN

JUSSIE SMOLLETT SENTENCED: Smollett has begun serving a 150-day sentence for staging a hate crime hoax in 2019. ABC’s Andrea Fujii has details, plus the outburst from the actor in the courtroom.

Now we know he’s a liar, I’m going to look at an interview her gave in February 2019 in which he recounts the “attack”. I’ll look at the deceptive language he uses and how, despite telling a fabricated version of events, Smollett can’t help but leak the truth.

Having heard the evidence in court, we can break down the words and compare what he said happened with what we know happened. We can also identify when he “leaks” honesty. This isn’t about being wise after the event, but is about showing how solid the principals of this type of analysis are and learning more if possible.

In this first part, we’ll look at Jussie’s retelling of the “attack”.

Let’s analyse the words:

Interviewer:

What happened that night, Jesse?

Smollett:

When I landed in Chicago and Frank Gatson, who's like my uncle, and he's also my creative director, and he picked me up. And then we got back to the apartment. There was no food. And so, I went out to Walgreens thinking that they were 24 hours and to have a smoke.

What happened is always a question to pay attention to. Here. Smollett doesn’t start with the attack, he starts way before that. Truthful people will normally start just before the incident. Eg, “I was driving down the motorway when suddenly the car in front slammed on the brakes”.

Why start earlier? There are possibilities. It could be to establish a narrative, to explain why things which don’t make sense happened as they did. It can be because, in the deceivers mind, this is where events started, where they started their deception. It could be this is truthful and is easier to talk about than the lie that is to come later, so they are delaying.

In deceptive descriptions, there is often an effort to paint how normal events were until the incident happened.

As we go through, I think most of these possibilities are at play here.

And Smollett is in full story telling mode here using “and - this, so - that” which he does all the way through. He’s justifying every small event and action that makes up his story.

If his story was true, he was the victim of a vile attack. He wouldn’t need to justify anything.

Walgreens was closed. So, I called him up, and I said, hey, I'm going to run to Subway, which was across the street, and I'm gonna get a salad. Do you want anything?

I went to the Subway and got the order. During that time, I texted my manager, thinking that he was still in Australia because he was on an Australian tour with one of his other clients. I say, yo, call me when you can.

We still haven’t got to the incident, and he’s still telling a story. This is now firmly in the land of delaying. The other thing to note is the detail. It's very detailed, something which disappears once the attack comes.

Fighting and tussling

He called me immediately. And while he was on the phone, I heard as I was crossing the intersection, I heard “Empire”, and I don't answer to Empire, my name ain’t Empire and I didn't answer.

I kept walking, and then I heard (expletive) empire (n-word). So, I turned around, and I said, the fuck did you just say to me? I mean, I see .. the.. uh.. attacker masked, and he said this is MAGA country (expletive), punches me right in the face.

So, I punched his ass back, and then we started tussling, you know, it's very icy, and we ended up tussling by the stairs. uh… fighting, fighting, fighting. There was a second person involved who was kicking me in my back and … then it just stopped, and they ran off. And I saw where they ran.

Now we have the attack—this extract is 139 words long. The build up was 130 words. When asked ‘what happened?’, his reply is 50% what came before what happened and 50% what happened. A firm indicator of deception.

There’s another indicator of deception present, using the present tense when talking about past events. We see it with “I see the attacker” and “punches me right in the face”.

There is so much odd language in the description of the attack. First the word “tussling” which he uses twice. “Tussle” is typically used to describe an struggle which causes little harm. Like a tussle for the last biscuit. It’s not a word commonly used to describe a violent assault.

With hindsight, we know Smollett staged the assault, there was no danger involved and minimal violence, so “tussle” is appropriate.

Given the detail of events leading up to the attack, it’s very difficult to picture the attack with the scant detail given. “Fighting, fighting , fighting” is rushed, like he can’t wait to get over telling this, but it adds nothing to our knowledge of what happens. For the second attacker to be kicking Smollett in the back, I’d assume he was on the ground, but he doesn’t give that level of detail, so we don’t know.

The introduction of both attackers told strangely too. The first one is introduced as “I see .. the.. uh.. attacker masked, and he said ‘this is MAGA country”. At this point, he hasn’t been attacked yet, so we’d expect him not to call him an “attacker” here. It would either be more generic, such as “the guy” or “this man” or even “the guy who’d shouted at me”.

The second person just appears, with no introduction, Smollett shares no realisation of when he knew there were two people attacking him, which is a big deal when you think you’re only taking on one person.

We know that Smollett hired two men to stage the attack. So, he always thought about them as “attackers” and he always knew he’d be attacked by two people, there was no realisation.

And the phone was in my pocket, but it had fallen out. It was sitting there, and my manager was still on the phone. So, I picked up the phone and I said Brandon, and he’s like what’s going on. And I said I was just jumped. And I… then I looked down, and I see that there's a rope around my neck. Which I hadn't …

Interviewer - you hadn’t noticed it before?

No Because it was so fast. You know what I'm saying? It was so fast.

Interviewer - How long did this all…?

It felt like minutes, but it probably was like 30 seconds. Honestly, I can't tell you honestly. I noticed the rope around my neck and I started screaming.

Detail and not

Again, we have this strange mix of detail about the trivial (such as the phone’s journey from pocket to ground) and no detail about the important.

The not noticing the rope around the neck isn’t credible on a logical level. In words, he says he didn’t notice it going on because “it was so fast”, yet later he says it felt like the attack lasted minutes.

When talking about how long the attack lasted, Smollett says, “Honestly, I can’t tell you anything honestly”. I always pay attention for deception when I see the word “honestly”, it’s often used to mean ‘anything but honestly’. Here, I believe Smollett “leaks” the truth, “I can’t tell you anything honestly”.

That might sound harsh, but what do we expect to hear? I’d be expecting the simple “It felt like minutes, but it was probably 30 seconds” or “I don’t know” or “I couldn’t tell you exactly”. I don’t expect “I can’t tell you honestly”. A truthful person couldn’t tell us “exactly”, a deceitful person can’t tell us “honestly”.

Evidence gathering

A theme I will come to in the next analysis is that Smollett is keen to point to useful “evidence” he has to verify his story. He can do detail with evidence that he can’t do with the attack. In this extract, he is sure to pinpoint where the attack took place very specifically and that he saw in which direction the attackers ran away. More on that next time.

Conclusion

There are numerous deceptive indicators in Smollett’s account of what happened, and some signs of the truth coming out when he didn’t mean it to.

There are a few more observations I have about his words here – what do you notice? Leave your analysis or questions in the comments below.