On Tuesday night, the FBI concluded there was no hate crime after its investigation into the alleged noose found in the garage stall of NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace. Officials said it was not actually a noose at all but instead a rope used as a garage door pull that had been there since last year.
Bubba Wallace responded by giving an interview to CNN’s Don Lemon in which he refused to accept the FBI’s conclusion that this was not a hate crime. Wallace is sticking to his story that it was “a straight-up noose.”
Now, Hollywood star James Woods is calling Wallace out in his typical no-nonsense way.
“When the whole world is laughing at you, go crying to knucklehead Don Lemon. That should change everything,” Woods tweeted alongside a Fox News article about Wallace’s interview.
Leave it to James Woods to voice what so many of the rest of us are thinking.
Woods’ tweet highlights the divisiveness and futility of Bubba Wallace’s insistence on perpetuating this ‘hate crime’ narrative despite the FBI’s independent findings.
Despite the fact that the FBI would have no reason to come to a false conclusion about the origins of the noose, NASCAR’s No 43 Chevy Camaro driver continued pushing his hate crime claim in an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon.
“The image that I have and I have seen of what was hanging in my garage is not a garage pull,” Wallace said. “I’ve been racing all of my life,” he said. “We’ve raced out of hundreds of garages that never had garage pulls like that, so people who want to call it a garage pull and put out all the video of knots as their evidence, go ahead. From the evidence that we have, that I have, it’s a straight-up noose.
“The FBI stated it was a noose over and over again. NASCAR leadership has stated it was noose,” he added. “I can confirm that. I actually got evidence of what was hanging in my garage, over my car, around my pit crew guys to confirm that it was a noose. Never seen anything like it.”
While even Wallace could no longer deny that the “noose” clearly was not directed at him, he still seems to think that a hate crime may have taken place.
“It was a noose,” he said. “It was a noose, whether tied in 2019, or whatever, it was a noose. It wasn’t directed at me, but someone tied a noose that is what I am saying.”
“It doesn’t matter if we provide 100 percent facts and evidence, photo evidence, people are going to photoshop to make me look like the bad person in the end of the day,” Wallace added. “I will always have haters. I will always have the motivators to go out there and try to dethrone me from the pedestal I’m on.”
RELATED: Bubba Wallace Demands NASCAR Ban Confederate Flags From Races: ‘Get Them Out Of Here’
Fox News reported that the FBI released a statement on Tuesday saying that it “learned that garage number 4, where the noose was found, was assigned to Bubba Wallace last week. The investigation also revealed evidence, including authentic video confirmed by NASCAR, that the noose found in garage number 4 was in that garage as early as October 2019.”
“Although the noose is now known to have been in garage number 4 in 2019, nobody could have known Mr. Wallace would be assigned to garage number 4 last week,” the FBI concluded.
NASCAR explained the origins of the so-called ‘noose’ in their official statement following the conclusion of the FBI investigation.
“The FBI has completed its investigation at Talladega Superspeedway and determined that Bubba Wallace was not the target of a hate crime,” NASCAR’s statement reads. “The FBI report concludes, and photographic evidence confirms, that the garage door pull rope fashioned like a noose had been positioned there since as early as last fall.”
The FBI’s findings were corroborated by an employee of another racing team who used garage number 4 in the fall.
Woods Brothers Racing team issued a statement saying, “One of our employees alerted us yesterday morning that, without knowing the details of the incident, he recalled seeing a tied handle in the garage pull-down rope from last fall. We immediately alerted NASCAR and have assisted the investigation in every way possible.”
RELATED: Bubba Wallace Takes Pot Shot At NASCAR Driver Who Quit Over Confederate Flag Ban
#BubbaWallaceHoax was trending earlier today on Twitter. Does a hate crime hoax remind you of anyone?
After that, #BubbaSmollett started trending after Twitter users are comparing Wallace to Jussie Smollett, who infamously staged a hate crime against himself back in 2019:
Bubba Wallace can stick to his hate crime claim as much as he wants. But it seems the court of public opinion has turned on him, just as it did with Jussie Smollett. At the end of the day, it’s the evidence not emotion that tells the real story.
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