Could Kamala Harris’s ‘Justice for Victims of Lynching Act’ hand Jussie Smollett a long

Remember the Jussie Smollett hate-crime hoax, where the television actor claimed he was the victim of an attempted lynching by red (MAGA) hat-wearing assailants on the snowy streets of Chicago in early 2019?

It was easily debunked by a police investigation, but its timing coincided with a bill passed in Congress against lynching. 

Contrary to how it may have seemed at the time, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Sen. Corey Booker (D-N.J.), the bill’s sponsors, did not invent this lynching bill because of Jussie Smollett’s hoax.

The Smollett hoax was more like coincidentally good timing, as the case’s exposure in the press helped it pass the Congressional vote two weeks after the carefully planned attack. Smollett’s claims contained all the elements that the bill needed in order to gain publicity: it had a famous Black and gay man, a noose was at the scene to make the bill modern again, and the best part of all, it had maintained the Democrat-projected brand on Trump supporters as racist and homophobic. 

What’s the back story?

Harris and Booker had struggled for seven months to promote and finally pass the antiquated Justice for Victims of Lynching Act (JVLA) in December 2018. The JVLA was due to come up for a House vote on Feb. 14, 2019, and it faced criticism and apathy.

At the time, Harris and Booker would benefit from a stirring legislative achievement to boost their reputations. Both, after all, were running for president. Smollett’s so-called attempted lynching pushed their bill over the finish line. The staged crime also included a bonus smear of President Trump since Smollett’s perpetrators made certain to shout, “This is MAGA country!”

Casual news onlookers assumed that the bill was inspired by Smollett’s alleged hate crime, but critical thinkers sensed something out of kilter because bills are not conjured up that quickly. Fast forward to Dec. 1, 2023, and Smollett is ordered by the appeals court to finish out his 150-day jail sentence. However, he may be getting off easy. Fake or not, Smollett and others conspired to carry out a lynching hate crime, which, thanks to the bill he helped to pass, has much stiffer consequences.

To fully appreciate the irony, it might help to review the details.

Weeks before Smollett performed his hate crime hoax on Jan. 29, 2019, Sen. Harris and Booker were building their presidential candidate resumes by passing “historic” legislation for making lynching a federal hate crime. Harris had proudly stated: “This is a historic piece of legislation that would criminalize lynching, attempts to lynch and conspiracy to lynch for the first time in America’s history.”

However, the legislation might have seemed irrelevant to critics because fatal lynchings were already constituted as a homicide and there was no urgency to pass a bill about crimes that have not been newsworthy for more than 150 years. But, Smollett’s ‘modern day lynching’ would come to the rescue providing a Hollywood excitement to the anti-lynching bill’s scheduled voting session.

Most notably, Sen. Harris was poised to smear her presidential campaign opponent, Donald Trump, and his supporters for being “MAGA-country” racists, because those are the words that Smollett trained his paid attackers to shout.

The talented Smollett had created the racist, homophobic assault just as if he was the director, prop master, and producer of a faux-documentary that would act as a PowerPoint for Harris’s and Booker’s JVLA legislative bill and tarnish Trump supporters at the same time. But looking back at Harris’s and Booker’s knee-jerk, social media reactions, immediately after Smollett’s attack was on the news, it should have been painfully obvious they very well could have been inspirations if not supporters of Smollett’s performance.

Just hours following the press release of Smollett’s alleged assault, Sen. Harris tweeted her empathy for Smollett but made certain to underscore that the crime gave relevance to her proposed legislation because it was, after all, a “MODERN-DAY LYNCHING.”

Booker’s “I told you so” message was particularly telling in this Jan. 29, 2019 tweet: “To those in Congress who don’t feel the urgency to pass our Anti-Lynching bill designating lynching as a federal hate crime– I urge you to pay attention!” 

Moreover, Harris was planning to offer reparations for Black American lynching victims to spark her presidential campaign had Smollett’s sham not been exposed. As a bonus, President Trump’s campaign would have been crippled with racism charges. Likely, Harris may have daydreamed that Smollett’s attack, allegedly by Trump supporters, would be a sizzling talking point during the presidential debate.

All said and done, Smollett was convicted of five felony counts of disorderly conduct in 2021, and served six days in jail of his 150-day sentence while his appeal was in progress. On Dec. 1, 2023, Smollett was ordered by the appeals court to finish his sentence, which is significantly less than the punishment penned by Harris and Booker for conspirators of a lynch hate crime (which he clearly was).

Smollett’s legal team vowed to keep pursuing this case straight to the Supreme Court.

If they do, ironically, Harris, Booker, and Smollett — and by God’s poetic justice — they likely could be proclaimed co-conspirators of a lynch hate crime, facing a 10-year sentence according to the very legislation they were desperately trying to make immortal.

According to the bill, in Section 250: Lynching

Whoever conspires with another person to violate section 245, 247, or 249 of this title or section 901 of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (42 U.S.C. 3631) shall be punished in the same manner as a completed violation of such section, except that if the maximum term of imprisonment for such completed violation is less than 10 years, the person may be imprisoned for not more than 10 years.

Marie Hembree, M.A. Strategic Communications/Ph.D. (ABD) is a resource specialist/instructor for academic success and an investigative journalist finishing a dissertation in the communications doctoral discipline.

Image: Walt Disney Television, via Flickr // CC BY-ND 2.0