Television actor Jussie Smollett, arrested last month on a single charge of perpetrating a hate-crime hoax, has been newly indicted on 16 felony counts of falsely reporting to police that he was assaulted by two strangers shouting racist and homophobic slurs.
The indictment, returned by a Cook County grand jury on Thursday and made public on Friday, greatly expands on the legal jeopardy faced by Smollett, whose story of being attacked in Chicago by supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump has drawn suspicion since it first surfaced in late January.
Smollett, 36, who is black and openly gay and plays a gay musician on the Fox network hip-hop drama "Empire," was charged last month in a single-count criminal complaint with making a false report to police, defined under Illinois law as a form of disorderly conduct.