In a late turn of events days out from the start of the highly anticipated “Broadview 6” immigration protest trial, U.S. Judge April Perry is ordering prosecutors into her courtroom on Thursday for a closed door meeting.
Perry had agreed to review unredacted transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that led to the indictment of Oak Park Village Trustee Brian Straw and several other progressive Chicagoland politicians on federal conspiracy and impeding an agent charges last year. With the trial set to begin on Tuesday, May 26, Perry is ordering the U.S. Attorneys on the case and their supervisors into her courtroom to discuss what had been redacted from the original grand jury transcript.
“Any AUSA who participated in the decision to redact portions of the grand jury transcripts, whether on the trial team or at the supervisory level, is ordered to appear in person at the hearing,” the notice to prosecutors read. “Due to the anticipated discussion of grand jury materials and in an effort to avoid tainting the jury venire, the proceedings will be conducted under seal.”
The hearing will be held in Perry’s courtroom at 11 a.m. Thursday, May 21.
The move comes as one of the most anticipated misdemeanor trials in the history of downtown Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse draws less than a week away. While prosecutors recently agreed to dismiss with prejudice the felony conspiracy charges against Straw and the other three defendants, the trial on their remaining misdemeanor charges has been expected to last two full weeks.
That reversal came after the government had already dropped all of its charges against two of the original defendants who were indicted last year. The four still charged in the case are Straw, 45th ward Democratic committeemanMichael 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.
Defense counsel had been seeking unredacted copies of the grand jury transcripts in recent weeks, with Straw’s attorney Chris Parente questioning the government’s reasoning for redacting about 30 lines of the transcript again at a pretrial conference Monday.
“Whatever happened in the proceeding could’ve tainted all of this,” said Parente.
The defense had previously made a push for those records in a recent court filing after prosecutors abandoned the felony charges.
“This remarkable about-face, abandoning a high-profile indictment rather than submit to scrutiny of its conduct before the grand jury comes at a time of mounting national distrust in the Department of Justice’s use of the grand jury process,” attorneys wrote earlier this month.
Parente also spoke to the issue during a public appearance alongside Straw at an event held by the Democratic Party of Oak Park earlier this month, saying that he felt the defense’s push for the transcripts was what led to prosecutors abandoning the felony conspiracy charge.
“They dismissed the felony because we’d asked for the grand jury transcripts on the instructions of the law,” Parente said. “Not any testimony by any agent or any victim or any witness.”
“We just said ‘How did they explain it to the grand jury?’ And instead of letting us see that, the U.S. Attorney’s office, after six months of fighting us on 1st amendment grounds and every other ground they could fight us on, decided to dismiss the count all together, and moot the issue.”
The misdemeanor impeding a federal officer charges that the four now face carry a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a maximum fine of $100,000, according to lead federal prosecutor William Hogan.
The court has arranged for an overflow room at the courthouse where the public will be able to view the highly publicized and politicized proceedings, along with reserved seating in the courtroom for the defendants’ families.
The government previously dropped the charges against original co-defendants 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.
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.
Bill Dwyer contributed reporting to this story.