Federal prosecutors responded dubiously this week to Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw’s attorneys’ request that any record of White House officials encouraging criminal charges for the “Broadview 6” be turned over.
No record of White House influence of the Broadview ICE protest-related federal conspiracy charges brought last year against Straw and several other local progressive politicians exists, federal prosecutors argued in a Monday filing. In previous filings, defense attorneys had contended that the Department of Justice under President Donald Trump had shown a pattern of targeting the president’s political enemies, which they argued was playing out again in this case.
Federal prosecutors called the request for White House materials “delusional.”
“To be absolutely clear at the outset, defendants’ Motion to Compel is premised solely on unsupported accusations that are not only reckless but completely false,” Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan wrote. “Defendants’ position is squarely based on their nonsensical hypothesis that officials in Washington had such an interest in local Illinois government — including routine Oak Park ordinance meetings — that they could pick these politically obscure figures out of a crowd of dozens of pushing and shoving protesters, somehow recognize them as ‘enemies’ of the Administration, order their selective and vindictive prosecution, and blithely expect career prosecutors in Chicago to violate multiple ethical and legal standards to go along with illegitimate orders while jeopardizing their professional reputations.”
‘“Such assumptions are the product of fevered paranoia and delusional speculation, not to mention grossly disingenuous and thoroughly irresponsible.”
The next hearing in the case is set for April 7.
This filing comes weeks after the government 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 congressional primary last month, and Andre Martin, who worked on Abughazaleh’s campaign staff.
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.
The trial is set to begin on Tuesday, May 26.
Last month, 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.
Straw’s attorney Chris Parente argued in court before U.S. Judge April Perry during a hearing on March 19 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.
Hogan said in last month’s hearing that the state 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.”
Parente cited a New York Times article published that week 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 confrontation that led to the charges. Hogan said he was not familiar with the presidential memo until Parente forwarded him the Times article hours before last month’s hearing.
The defense had also previously cited tweets from federal agency accounts mocking Abughazaleh ahead of the indictments as evidence that she was a known “enemy” of the Trump administration. 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.
In Monday’s filing, Hogan further defended against the defense’s claim of selective prosecution by arguing that the defendants picked out of the crowd were not wearing masks, as other protestors were.
This latest exchange follows 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.