Twitter flirtations with gay strippers. Alleged advances on homosexual acquaintances. The grand jury indictment of actor Jussie Smollett on felony false reporting charges he orchestrated a hate crime lynching hoax in Chicago to smear Trump supporters as racists is raising old questions about the personal life and authenticity of New Jersey Democrat Senator Cory Booker and Booker’s actual relationship with Smollett, who is openly gay.

Smollett, who has now been written of out of his hit show, Empire and dumped by the Fox Network in the broil of the present scandal makes no secret of his flamboyantly gay lifestyle. Rumors of homosexuality and allegations about paid male escorts have swirled around Cory Booker since his foray into politics and his tenure as mayor of Newark, New Jersey from 2006 to 2013.

Sources tell the Shad Olson Show there is reason to believe Smollett and Booker have been more than just acquaintances over time and that the syncopation of Smollett’s race crime hoax in Chicago just weeks before lofting of an anti-lynching law sponsored by Presidential hopefuls, Senator Cory Booker and Kamala Harris was anything but coincidental and was rather, an earned media hit job to add visibility to Booker’s announcement as a Presidential candidate in a crowded Democrat field.

On January 30, Senator Cory Booker responded to the alleged lynching attempt with an immediate call for legislation specifically criminalizing such crimes. Even then, the combination felt like an orchestrated sequence of events. A dramatization of a supposed lynching incident to grab spotlight for Booker’s grandstanding on a style of racially motivated execution that was used by Ku Klux Klan Dixiecrats in the Jim-Crowe South.

“The vicious attack on actor Jussie Smollett was an attempted modern-day lynching. I’m glad he’s safe,” said Booker. “To those in Congress who don’t feel the urgency to pass our Anti-Lynching bill designating lynching as a federal hate crime—I urge you to pay attention.”

“The vicious attack on actor Jussie Smollett was an attempted modern-day lynching. I’m glad he’s safe,” said Booker. “To those in Congress who don’t feel the urgency to pass our Anti-Lynching bill designating lynching as a federal hate crime—I urge you to pay attention.”

As for deeper connections between Booker and Smollett, Democrats this week interjected a public claim that Booker had been dating Jussie Smollett’s sister. Previous to that, he’d been linked to Rosario Dawson and to hippie new age poet and Twitter pal, Cleo Wade, who told the New York Times, “We’re very close, and I consider him family.”

Still, even a furiously assembled string of purported romantic involvements with women have done nothing to tamp down persistent rumors that Booker is indeed a gay man, living a gay life and working equally furiously to keep the true nature of his personal preferences from impacting on his aspirations for the White House.

And those rumors and questions began from the moment he stepped into the public spotlight.

Questions about Booker’s sexuality swirled during his run for U.S. Senate after he was forced to scramble to delete a Twitter interaction with a male stripper that became fodder for the campaign of Republican opponent, Steve Lonegan. Headlines flared after Lonegan’s press liaison broached the topic, telling a reporter that Booker interacted the gay stripper in a manner befitting “a gay guy.” But that’s as far as Lonegan’s camp would go.

For opponents on both sides of the aisle, evolution of cultural permissiveness regarding homosexuality means that such personal questions about bedroom behavior must center around Booker’s denials and authenticity.

More damningly, in October, 2018 Senator Booker was publicly accused of sexually assaulting a gay acquaintance in a public restroom following an official function. The anonymous accuser who had been a staunch Booker supporter and confidante hired legal representation by Harmeet Dhillon of the Dhillon Law Group, and published this statement:

“I stopped to use one of the building’s single-occupancy restrooms. Upon washing my hands prior to leaving, I heard knocking on the door,” he wrote. “When I opened the door, Mr. Booker was there. He smiled and very gregariously said ‘Hey!’

“He then put his left hand on my groin, over my jeans and began to rub. I seem to remember saying something like ‘What is happening?’ It was a bit like having vertigo. He then used his other hand to grab my left hand with his right and pulled it over to touch him. At the same time, he disengaged from rubbing me and used his left hand to push me to my knees from my shoulder for what was clearly a move to have me perform oral sex on him. At that point, I pulled away quite violently and told him I had to go. I did not see him again before he left. “ 

Read the entirety of that account here.

In interviews discussing his Presidential candidacy, Booker responds to rumor and innuendo about his sex life in ways reminiscent of denials by closeted gay male icons in the 1980’s and 90’s. Think Freddie Mercury in politics. Booker says things in ways no straight man would ever need to. And in sentences unnecessarily long for a yes or no question.

Booker told the Philadelphia Enquirer, “I’m heterosexual.” He added, “Every candidate should run on their authentic self, tell their truth, and more importantly, or mostly importantly, talk about their vision for the country.”

Booker repeated the routine to GayStar Magazine, insisting again that he is heterosexual but that he is a staunch supporter of gay marriage, carefully treading a line that finds many in today’s openly gay community openly hostile toward public figures who are unwilling to be open and honest about who they are.

“People who think I’m gay, some part of me thinks it’s wonderful,” he said. “Because I want to challenge people on their homophobia. I love seeing on Twitter when someone says I’m gay, and I say, ‘So what does it matter if I am? So be it. I hope you are not voting for me because you are making the presumption that I’m straight.”  For a man so frequently photographed with beautiful women, those words have come out of Senator Cory Booker’s mouth with frequency unfamiliar to most straight men. Straight men don’t say, “I’m straight.”

In 2019, when being openly homosexual carries protected class social status and can actually boost career appeal if properly played and revealed, (Ellen Degeneres, Melissa Etheridge) Booker’s decision to maintain a closeted or bisexual existence is clear indicator that even for liberal Democrats, (Cory Booker was rated as the third most liberal U.S. Senator by The New York Times,)  Presidential aspirations clearly relegate open admissions of homosexuality to death blow status regarding viability for the highest office in America.

Personal matters aside there are fair questions to be raised about the hip pocket coordination between Booker and Smollett regarding an incident that has now been utterly proven to be a shocking hoax.

Just how much communication and dare we say collusion happened between Smollett and Senator Booker in the weeks and months prior to the hoaxing incident? Could it be that Jussie Smollett’s shameful, clumsy and ill-advised Chicago deception will end up revealing far more than simply the depths Democrats are willing to dive in order to demonize President Donald Trump and the red hatted MAGA supporters who put him in the White House?