As ‘Empire’ star, Jussie Smollett, casually walked down the streets of downtown Chicago at 2 am, two masked men dressed in black shouted racial and homophobic slurs as they aggressively beat him in the face with their hands, poured a substance thought to be bleach on him, and tied a rope around his neck, (allegedly.) The thirty-six-year-old actor and singer is black and openly gay.

The Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said that investigators have received footage of Smollett walking home with a rope tied around his neck minutes after the attack. They have also obtained surveillance video of the possible culprits fleeing the scene. Investigators have yet to recover footage of the assault itself. At first, Smollett was reluctant to go to the police and report the incident but someone close to him convinced him to. Guglielmi added that the officers who arrived at his house following the attack reported that he still had the rope around his neck and his face covered in cuts and scrapes. Smollett later reported that the assailants yelled, “This is MAGA country!” during the attack.

There seems to have been a warning sent to his house a week before the attack in the form of a letter. On February 22nd, FBI investigated a letter sent to Smollett’s house that contained a white powder that ended up being crushed powder Tylenol. Investigators are currently trying to track down the store that the rope was bought from to either prove that this whole incident is a hoax or that it was, in fact, real and lead them to the assailants. Some people believe that the incident was a hoax because Smollett said when he reported the attack, he was on the phone with his agent when he got attacked but he and his agent are reluctant to hand over their phones to investigators. If the incident is proven to be a hoax, Chicago police intend to press charges against Smollett.

President Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday (Jan. 31) that he saw the story the night before, “It doesn’t get worse, as far as I’m concerned.” The president’s Trump International Hotel & Tower is in the general area where the attack took place.