Come on, you know the answer to this!
There's already this narrative out there, that when a poc makes a claim of a 'hate crime', that it's likely a made up story. Smollett is a high profile American, he should have known that his actions here would get a high rate of national exposure, and now that we know he made it up, it now makes it much harder for people who really have been victims of hate crimes to prove their case.
Now I know that's not what he was charged and convicted of, but the judge's words make it apparent that the sentence he rendered, was influenced by Smollett's phony claims.