Fallout from the collapse of the ‘Broadview 6’ federal prosecution continued this week, with calls for resignations, a rare “special report” from the U.S. Attorney’s office and a defense motion for financial damages being paid to the defendants.
The criminal case against Oak Park Village Trustee Brian Straw and several other progressive political figures indicted on felony charges tied to an anti-ICE protest last fall fell apart just a few days before the trial was set to begin last month. The case was dropped at the 11th hour when a judge’s review of unredacted grand jury transcripts revealed several improper actions by prosecutors during that initial phase of the case.
Sheri Mecklenburg, the original federal prosecutor in the case, has already been fired from her new role as counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee over her handling of the case, with high-level calls for more firings coming this week.
Illinois’ U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth jointly called on Northern District of Illinois U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros to resign.
“Andrew Boutros’s time as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois has been riddled with chaos, deep internal dysfunction, and alleged misconduct,” the senators said Tuesday. “He must resign, and there must be an open, transparent, and nonpartisan search to nominate the next U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.”
The senators’ call comes a week after a pledge for “sweeping reforms” to the district’s grand jury processes from Boutros’ office. The reforms would be “the most substantial and significant internal changes to the office’s grand jury procedures in decades,” the office claimed in a press release last week.
The office also released a “special report” meant to counter defense attorney’s assertions that Boutros had improperly addressed the grand jury in the case. Boutros had addressed grand jurors ahead of the Broadview 6’s indictment and two other cases last October in light of “prior grand jury disturbances and potential tension,” according to the report.
That report came as defense attorneys have continued their push for financial penalties against the government over the grand jury violations. The defense filed a motion this week looking for sanctions that would allow the defendants to recoup all of the hundreds of thousands in legal fees they’d accrued over the months of litigation, according to the filing.
“This fight isn’t over,” Straw’s attorney Chris Parente said in a statement this week. “We will use every available tool to ensure that the public knows exactly what happened in this case, who within the Department of Justice knew about the prosecutorial misconduct that led to this sham political indictment, and when they knew it. This motion gives the court jurisdiction, and us the right to discovery, over critical issues of public interest. We already are seeing the impact of our battle for transparency in cases in the northern district and nationwide, and we will not stop our efforts until justice is served and those responsible for a miscarriage of justice are no longer in positions of public trust.”
“The U.S. Attorney has now acknowledged having personal contact with the Broadview 6 grand jury—on the date they delivered the indictment in this case. As the transcript demonstrates, U.S. Attorney Boutros asked these grand jurors, who previously refused to return an indictment, to ‘raise their hand’ if they had personal feelings on immigration cases, and informed them there would be a ‘different procedure’ for them. This was one week after the AUSA dismissed grand jurors who voiced dissent in the Broadview 6 case presentation.”
After seven months of prosecution, the trial for Oak Park’s Straw and his codefendants 45th ward Democratic committeeman Michael Rabbit, Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, who fell four points shy of winning Illinois’ 9th district congressional primary in April, and Andre Martin, who worked on Abughazaleh’s campaign staff, had been set to begin Tuesday, May 26. The charges were dismissed after U.S. Judge April Perry’s review of grand jury transcripts revealed that Assistant U.S. Attorneys had polluted the case by impermissibly “vouching” for the strength of evidence during the grand jury process, communicating with grand jurors outside of the sessions and dismissing grand jurors who dissented from the government’s narrative, according to defense attorneys.
The charges against the group stemmed from allegations that the defendants were part of a crowd that had illegally blocked an ICE agent from driving into the federal immigration agency’s detention facility in Broadview last September.
The defendants were originally charged under a felony conspiracy statute that carried the potential for a decade-long prison sentence. That original felony conspiracy charge had been dropped in May, after the government had already abandoned all charges against two of the original defendants.