Second brother who alleges he helped Jussie Smollett stage a phony hate crime against himself takes witness stand at actor’s trial - Chicago Tribune

Olabinjo Osundairo, a former stand-in on Smollett’s show, “Empire,” testified that on the night of the attack he was initially distracted by a nearby car, but sprang into action when he saw his younger brother, Abimbola, wrestling with Smollett on the ground.

Walker also confronted Osundairo with his grand jury testimony that he believed a $3,500 check that Smollett gave them the day before the attack was for a meal and training plan they’d developed for the actor, not payment for carrying out the hoax.

Earlier in his direct examination, Osundairo describing for the jury how he said Smollett had recruited him and his brother for the phony attack.

He said he was out getting mail at his apartment when his brother and Smollett pulled up in Smollett’s Mercedes on the afternoon of Jan.

27, Olabinjo said, Smollett got more specific about their roles: “For me, he wanted me to put the noose around his neck and pour bleach on him, while my brother hit him and put the bruise on his face.”?

Smollett asked Abimbola to do the hitting because “He didn’t think that I would be able to hold my punches back,” said Olabinjo, whose ripped physique was shown to the jury through a shirtless photo of him on the “Empire” set?

The cross-examination of Abimbola Osundairo got off to a dramatic start Thursday morning with the defense suggesting he was secretly dating Smollett — or at least used the “sexual tension” between him and the actor to advance his own career?

From the stand, Osundairo strongly denied that their relationship was romantic, and said he did not believe Smollett had any kind of crush on him.

Osundairo testified earlier this week that Smollett instructed him and his brother Olabinjo to fake a hate crime attack on him in January 2019.

And in a made-for-TV moment, Allen asked Abimbola Osundairo: “When did you and Jussie start dating?”.

The two men had sometimes gone to a bathhouse in Boystown together, Osundairo testified on direct examination Wednesday, but said he was unsure whether it was a gay bathhouse.

Over more than four hours of questioning by prosecutors Wednesday, Abimbola Osundairo walked jurors through the planning and execution of the attack in minute detail, including Smollett’s request that Osundairo and his brother “fake beat him up” because he felt his security on the “Empire” set wasn’t being taken seriously

The plan culminated, Osundairo said, when he and his brother Olabinjo spotted Smollett near his Streeterville apartment around 2 a.m

“I said, ‘Hey, aren’t you that Empire (homophobic slur)?’ and we said the other words, and my brother said, ‘This is MAGA country,’” Osundairo testified