Don Lemon is calling his friend Jussie Smollett a liar after he was found guilty of staging a fake hate crime.
Last night, during a segment on his show with legal analyst Joey Jackson, Lemon reviewed the actor’s guilty conviction.
Lemon said that in order for Smollett to explain his fake narrative of the two Trump-supporting bigots beating him up and wrapping a noose around his neck, he “had to make up too many lies.”
“I guess he got caught up in that because he took the stand himself. He got angry with the prosecutor as the prosecutor poked holes in his story, calling the only other witnesses liars,” Lemon said of the high-profile trial.
He added that Smollet potentially made it harder for other “legitimate victims of hate crimes” to be taken seriously.
Smollett was convicted guilty of five of six counts of felony disorderly conduct for submitting a false police report.
Despite briefly addressing Smollett’s “lies,” Lemon continued to disregard a pivotal aspect of Smollet’s testimony in which he claimed Lemon told him that he was under investigation by police.
After receiving a text message from Lemon, Smollett informed the court that police had doubts about his account of events.
Since then, Lemon has received backlash for his continued silence about the incident. Many compared the incident to Chris Cuomo, who was recently fired from CNN for interfering in his brother Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s sexual harassment scandal.
On a Thursday, Lemon’s legal analyst guest described Smollett’s testimony as “devastating” for his case.
“When you look at the case, the verdict, everything else — many people have said this is a case about credibility and he said, she said. I disagree. Every case relies upon credibility, but it’s also about a narrative that makes sense,” Jackson said.
“We lawyers, before we go before juries and pick them, we say always use your common sense and good judgment. And when you weave a web and tell a tale, it becomes problematic. I think that’s what happened here.”
“His narrative, Mr. Smollett’s, didn’t carry the day and the jury discerned something was amiss and they found him accountable. So that was the right result.”
Asked if Smollett was likely to face jail time, Jackson said yes because the judge would want to “send a message to all others that you probably should not be doing this.”
“… if you come into a courtroom and you take the stand, which is your right, but you fabricate and you’re caught in those lies, I think a judge really is taken aback by that,” Jackson said.
Lemon’s reporting on the Jussie Smollett verdict contrasted sharply with his initial coverage in 2019.
Smollett’s case was “personal” to him because they were friends, he revealed to CNN viewers.
Lemon also claimed to text the actor “every day” to check on his well-being in a 2019 interview with Entertainment Tonight.
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