Though Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office let actor Jussie Smollett off the hook for charges that he staged a fake hate crime, he is not out of the woods just yet. The feds are looking into the case, and the city of Chicago has filed a civil suit against him.

But though Smollett still faces these hurdles, and the court of public opinion has given a thumbs down to the “Empire” star’s story, his family is still defending him. His brother JoJo laid out what he believes is a case for proving Jussie’s innocence in a piece published over the weekend at BET.

In it, he argued that there were things about the case that were allegedly “under-reported” in the news media about the Osundairo brothers in particular, and basically blames the whole situation on them “changing their story” and the police believing these two “false witnesses.” He’s more or less floating the conspiracy theories laid out by fans of his brother, theories that don’t pan out under scrutiny.

Later in the piece, JoJo thanked his brother’s “village” of supporters. He also suggested that people turned against his brother thanks to “the desire among the far-right to criminalize whole sectors of the country, which they either refuse to accept or feel are natural political opponents.”

This is really ironic, considering the available evidence makes it clear that Smollett himself was using that same “criminalize whole sectors of the country” tactic himself against Trump supporters, because he knew at least initially he would be believed by The Usual Suspects in the MSM and on the left.

Not only that, but the Chicago police department, their investigators, and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office are not exactly members of “the far-right”, either. It was these agencies who laid out the case against Jussie Smollett.

JoJo also wrote:

I have literally seen him violently awakening from night terrors, following the assault. Some of my siblings, as well as Jussie’s partner and closest friends have seen similar things.

This is a man defending his brother, which is what you’d see a lot of siblings do in similar situations. But his brother’s story just doesn’t add up – there were credible skeptics about it very early on.

And as Hot Air‘s Jazz Shaw points out, a lot of this could – perhaps – be cleared up if Jussie Smollett would do just one little thing:

Even Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, the woman who did Jussie the biggest solid imaginable and endangered her own career in the process, called Smollett a “washed up celebrity who lied to the cops.”

Of course, if Jussie Smollett really wanted to clear his good name and spare his brother these rather embarrassing denials, he could do so. The main reason we’re left in the dark is that the records of the case were sealed in a midnight deal cut by the aforementioned Kim Foxx’s office. The only beneficiary of that action was Jussie, so if he had his attorneys petition the court to unseal the records and release them to the public, a lot of this could probably be cleared up.

Indeed.

In trying to exonerate Jussie in the court of public opinion, JoJo may have done him more harm than good.

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—Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter.–