Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw learned that he would not have to stand trial on federal criminal charges when U.S. Northern District of Illinois U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros walked into a courtroom and acknowledged that prosecutors had tainted his case in grand jury proceedings seven months prior.
Straw and his “Broadview 6” ICE protest codefendants addressed assembled members of the local and national media on the first floor of Downtown Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse in the immediate aftermath of the highly politicized case’s abrupt collapse Thursday, May 21. After months of headlines where the group found themselves at the center of questions of freedom of speech and protest rights protections amid the Trump administration’s Chicago mass deportation blitz, the group could now head off to enjoy a celebratory drink at a downtown bar.
While there, one of his co-defendants asked Straw and his wife, Shannon, how they planned to celebrate the dismissal. But Straw already had plans for that evening: a date with the rest of Oak Park’s finance committee for a meeting on the village’s strategic budget planning.
National attention didn’t trump his commitment to the municipal voters who elected him. And now, he has learned in new ways what it means to lead with courage and community.
“Courage isn’t a lack of fear, but what we do in the face of that fear,” Straw said. “One of the biggest lessons I learned coming out of this is if I have the courage to do what I think needs to be done in a moment, my community is going to get behind me. I hope that is something that the rest of our community takes away from this as well.”
Straw had spent the last seven months balancing the weight of the case, which had threatened years in prison for a felony conspiracy charge, with the demands of his roles as father, husband, elected village trustee, small business owner and career civil litigator. There was also the challenge of fundraising to support his legal defense, with winning a federal criminal case proving to be a much more expensive proposition than winning a campaign for an Oak Park board seat.
The trial for 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 May 26. The government had already abandoned prosecutions against two of the case’s original conspiracy defendants and downgraded the charges against the remaining four to misdemeanors earlier in May.
The charges against the four remaining defendants were dismissed in total 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.
Straw said his prosecution drove home the importance of striving for a “generational” impact, and insulating Oak Park from the impact of national uncertainty while providing protection for the village’s most vulnerable residents.
“It was really important to me because there are there are folks who like to say Oak Park village officials focus on what’s happening on the national stage’s not what’s happening here locally,” Straw said. “I’m employing generational thinking as opposed to just what matters for the next five years because I’m serving as a village trustee because I want a community that’s going to serve our kids.”
Straw gave an interview to Wednesday Journal in the courtyard of Spilt Milk, speaking over the noise of village construction crews doing the “generational” work of replacing the century-old pipes underneath Oak Park Avenue.
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 agent’s van had sustained some light exterior damage from protestors, but the government had never accused Straw or any of the other defendants of causing that damage themselves.
Still, they contended that Straw and the other defendants had formed a “spontaneous” criminal conspiracy on the ground in Broadview last fall. Straw said he didn’t speak with any of his fellow defendants until after their indictment and could only really begin getting to know them after the charges were dropped last month.
“I think all of us avoided anything other than surface level conversations,” he said. “The first question (Abughazaleh) asked me was ‘what’re your three favorite preparations of potato?’ Those were the types of conversations I was able to have with my co-defendants. But over the last two weeks we’ve been able to have more personal conversations and have been able to talk with the only other people who have had this same experience.”
Straw said while looking for a plea deal could’ve made some of the stress go away, he had full support from his family to pursue his defense.
He made the time to watch his 11-year-old son blossom as a “utility player” on his travel baseball team this spring. He fought the charges with Shannon by his side at every downtown hearing and with his 6-year-old daughter’s encouragement that he was being an “upstander” not a “bystander.”
“The prosecution was about a disregard for First Amendment rights and about trying to silence political dissent,” Straw said. “There are so many ways in which I thought it was really important for us as defendants, to be showing how this was being weaponized against our community as a whole to silence political dissent, and to try to get people who were out there speaking out to stay home.”
Oak Park neighbors stepped up, too, helping with child care, fundraising and anything else that came up for Straw’s family. Straw said he had Parente’s number to call because of youth baseball in Oak Park.
“I am someone sometimes deeply uncomfortable with asking for help,” he said. “But this community is going to jump up for you with abandon.”
But the strain on the family was extreme, Straw said. The family had to move out of their home for a time shortly after his indictment when Straw received a death threat over the phone.
Nightmares for his children continued after police cleared them to move back into their house.
“My children are never going to get back to the level of innocence and trust in authority that I think most kids in Oak Park have,” he said.
The fallout from the case’s collapse has continued over the past several weeks, with the defense team pushing for an order for the government to pay damages covering the groups’ legal fees. The misconduct in the case has also been cited in several other high-profile federal cases seen as advocates as political retribution from Trump’s Department of Justice, including the cases against journalist Don Lemon and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
But the misconduct has also been cited by defendants less aligned with Straw’s politics and worldview, like ex-Loretto hospital executive Mahmood Sami Khan who faces federal fraud charges for his alleged role in a $800 million fraud scheme.
The misconduct uncovered in the Broadview 6 threatens the mission of the court, Straw said.
“I think one of the really difficult and painful things about this is the U.S. Attorney’s office performs a really important function and prosecuting public corruption and white collar crime in this moment is incredibly important,” Straw said. “Instead, those resources are being redirected to focusing on civil immigration issues and political prosecutions and that’s a real shame.”
Illinois’ U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth have jointly called on Boutros to resign. The original lead prosecutor in the case has already been fired from her new federal posting.
But now, sitting deeper in his values and commitments to Oak Park, Straw said he is still figuring out life after the Broadview 6.
“I think for all of us, this is going to be a defining moment in our lives, there will always be for us some, this is my life before the Broadview 6 case and this is my life after,” Straw said. “All of us are in the process of figuring out what that life after is.”
Straw, Parente join WJ Conversation on June 25
Brian Straw and his attorney, Chris Parente, will join moderator Charlie Meyerson for a conversation about their Broadview 6 experience in an event hosted by Wednesday Journal.
The conversation will be held June 25 at 7 p.m. at the 19th Century Club, 178 N. Forest Ave. There is no charge for admission.