Jussie Smollett trial begins with prosecutor alleging a bogus hate crime and actor’s defense insisting case was ‘tremendous rush to judgment’

“I want you to attack me, but when you hit me, I want you to kind of pull your punches a bit because I don’t want to get seriously hurt,” Webb said Smollett told the brothers. Smollett also instructed them to put a rope around his neck to “make it look more like a lynching, like a hate crime,” Webb said.