Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw was the only defendant in court Thursday morning when U.S. Judge April Perry approved the defense’s request that any record of White House officials encouraging criminal charges for the “Broadview 6” be turned over.
As long as a record of White House influence exists, that is.
The defense team has argued that Straw and the other progressive political figures charged with felony conspiracy were selectively targeted over their political affiliation and criticisms of the Trump administration. Prosecutors filed an indictment last October alleging that the six were among a crowd of protestors who blocked, pushed against and banged on a vehicle being driven by a federal agent into ICE’s Broadview Detention Facility the morning of Sept. 26
Last week, the defense filed a motion asking for materials that could show an “improper influence” from top federal officials encouraging Northern District of Illinois prosecutors to charge the individuals.
U.S. Attorney William Hogan said the Department of Justice would provide a record of any White House communications concerning the case, but that he didn’t think any outreach had been made from high level federal officials.
“To my knowledge, and I’m not saying I know for sure, but my understanding is that there is none,” Hogan said. “I don’t think we’d have any problem disclosing that.”
Straw’s attorney Chris Parente argued Thursday morning that the case fits within a pattern of the Trump administration leveraging the Department of Justice to go after perceived political “enemies.”
“We’re not just out here trying to make things up, there’s things in the public record that show we’re in different times,” Parente said.
Perry stopped short of granting a defense team request to have internal White House documents included in discovery, limiting it to communications between district prosecutors and high-level federal officials.
The hearing came a week after the state dropped charges against two of the six original codefendants in the federal felony conspiracy case. The government dropped the charges against Catherine “Cat” Sharp, a Chicago aldermanic staffer who gave up on her bid for the Cook County board citing the stress of the prosecution, and Joselyn Walsh, a local musician who was the only defendant in the case that doesn’t have a job in local progressive politics.
Still charged are Straw, 45th ward Democratic committeeman Michael Rabbit, Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, who fell four points shy of winning Illinois’ 9th district Democratic congressional primary on Tuesday, and Andre Martin, who worked on Abughazaleh’s campaign staff. The trial is set for Tuesday, May 26.
The prosecution said a side mirror and a windshield wiper on the agent’s vehicle was damaged in the incident and the car was vandalized, but none of the indicted individuals are alleged to have directly caused the damage themselves.
Prosecutors also recently agreed to drop a part of the indictment that alleged that Straw and the others had planned to injure a federal officer.
Video of the confrontation included as an exhibit in the case also appears to show Abughazaleh using a megaphone to direct other protestors away from the “private property” at the DHS facility, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Parente cited a New York Times article published Thursday morning that reported that Justice Department officials had pressured U.S. Attorney offices to charge protestors with felonies.
The Times reported that federal prosecutors had been directed to appoint “coordinators” to pursue cases against anti-Trump protestors under National Security Presidential Memo 7, a presidential directive expanding the definition of domestic terrorism to include not only violent crimes like assault, but also relatively minor ones, like revealing the personal details of agents or getting in the way of immigration enforcement.
The memo, which also cites the assassination of Charlie Kirk, was issued on Sept. 25, 2025, a day before the protest that led to the charges against the six. Hogan said he was not familiar with the presidential memo until Parente forwarded him the Times article early Thursday morning.
In addition to the selective prosecution argument, defense attorneys have said they’re planning to try and have the case dismissed on first amendment grounds. The defense will also receive discovery materials covering any guidance the agent involved in the confrontation received from higher-ups regarding how he should interact with protestors.
Parente said the defense wants to see if agents had been directed to drive towards protestors in what he said could be a strategy to implicate protestors on impediment charges.
“This is just discovery, we’re not making these arguments yet,” Parente said. “If we’re right about this, then the government can shut down any protest, any ‘No Kings’ rally, by having a car drive towards protestors.”
Thursday’s hearing came after months of targeted challenges by defense counsel about the validity of the prosecution’s conspiracy allegation and evidence, as prosecutors have acknowledged they do not have evidence that the codefendants coordinated prior to the protest or that they knew each other prior to the day. The prosecution is alleging that they broke the law by way of a “spontaneous conspiracy.”
The so-called “Broadview 6” are among 32 known defendants to have been charged with nonimmigration crimes tied to Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago’s federal court. Many of those cases fell apart before reaching trial and the lone case which has reached a jury trial ended with an acquittal, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
The next hearing in the case is set for April 7.