Attorneys for the “Broadview 6” included records of a federal agent’s private and official communications in their latest court filing arguing that the defendants were targeted for prosecution over their political activism, but it didn’t convince the federal judge.
The motion came after the defense team drew the ire of the assistant U.S. Attorney on the case by asking that the government be ordered to produce records that might show the influence of high ranking federal officials on the decision to charge the defendants, including Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw, on federal conspiracy offenses for a confrontation with a federal agent at a protest outside the Broadview ICE detention facility last fall.
Federal prosecutors called the discovery request “delusional,” last week.
“Such assumptions are the product of fevered paranoia and delusional speculation, not to mention grossly disingenuous and thoroughly irresponsible,” Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan wrote in a filing.
The defense replied last Thursday, saying again that Donald Trump’s White House has demonstrated a pattern of using the Department of Justice to go after perceived enemies. The defense’s reply also included a private text from the federal agent involved in the case to “unknown associates” saying that his testimony in the case has made him famous among “lefties” and an email he sent to his superiors calling out the fact that his testimony had led to charges for several politicians.
“The Trump Administration and the current Department of Justice have shattered the time-honored norms that ensured the independence of the department and guarded against even the appearance of partisan politics and/or personal vendettas infecting prosecutorial decisions,” attorneys wrote. “Put plainly, one would have to be living under a rock to not recognize that in these unprecedented times, the current administration has repeatedly placed its heavy thumb on the scales of justice in an effort to use the department’s formidable criminal apparatus as a weapon against those it views as its political enemies.”
Judge April Perry ruled on Tuesday morning in open court to deny the defense’s motion to compel the state to provide the additional discovery, according to court records.
The recent filings come 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 jury trial in the case is set for Tuesday, May 26. If convicted of the conspiracy charge, the four could be sentenced to six years in prison.
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 at that time that reported that Justice Department officials had pressured U.S. Attorney offices to charge protestors with felonies.
In addition to claiming that the defendants were targeted by a “selective prosecution,” defense attorneys have said they’re planning to try and have the case dismissed on first amendment grounds.
In last week’s filing, Hogan further defended against the defense’s claim of selective prosecution by arguing that the defendants were 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.