Things have taken a turn for the worse for disgraced “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett this week as a federal judge has tossed out the malicious prosecution lawsuit he had launched against the city of Chicago and it’s police officers.

Fox News reported that Smollett filed this counter lawsuit in November of 2019 after Chicago sued him to try and get him to pay back the $130,000 they spent on having officers work overtime to investigate the racist and homophobic attack that he claimed had happened to him in January of that year. The officers eventually concluded that the attack never took place, accusing Smollett of staging it to increase his fame and earn himself a raise on “Empire.”

Smollett continued to stand by his story in his counter lawsuit, claiming that he was the victim of a malicious prosecution that caused humiliation and extreme distress.  U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall tossed the lawsuit out on Wednesday, however, ruling that Smollett could not sue the city until all of the legal proceeds against him are completed. This includes the six new counts against him that were filed back in February.

The judge made sure to add that the Chicago Police Department is motivated to bring Smollett to justice “for a crime it had probable cause to think he committed,” indicating that she is standing with the officers who claimed that Smollett had lied.

Smollett made headlines in January of 2019 when he claimed he was jumped by two men who shouted racist and homophobic slurs at him before chanting “this is MAGA country.” The entire nation rallied around him, but police soon found holes in his story, and the tide had turned against him by the time they announced that they believed he had made the entire attack up.

Smollett was facing years in prison for staging the attack before the charges against him were controversially dropped later on in 2019. A special prosecutor was then appointed to look over the case, which is how the six new charges against him came to be. The judge’s ruling this week indicates that Smollett may not be so lucky in trying to dodge these charges as he was last year.

This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.

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