As the Justice Department races to distance itself from the missteps in the prosecution of six anti-ICE protesters in Chicago, lawyers for those protesters — known as the “Broadview six” — are asking a federal judge to investigate the prosecutors who brought the case.
Lawyers for the group — which includes former Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh — filed a 27-page motion on Tuesday night laying out the reasons U.S. District Judge April Perry should appoint an independent investigator to look into the full extent of the prosecutors’ misconduct. The DOJ, they say, can’t be trusted to do it on its own.
Andrew Boutros, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, dropped the case with prejudice — citing significant “errors” in the grand jury presentations.
“An independent special counsel to investigate the possible misconduct here is absolutely critical to ensuring the public impression of a neutral and trustworthy investigation,” the group’s lawyers wrote.
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Federal prosecutors made three attempts to indict the protesters for “assaulting” officers; it’s practically unheard of to try to get an indictment more than once. Prosecutors dismissed grand jurors who were openly skeptical of the case presented by the government, and the experienced prosecutor leading the process, Sheri Mecklenburg, had private conversations with grand jurors despite strict rules forbidding such behavior.
Boutros chalked up those actions to a couple of prosecutors making mistakes on their own.
“It is my very sincere belief, Your Honor, that no prosecutor acted intentionally in misleading you, and that there was no desire to mislead the Court and no deliberate misconduct on the part of the prosecutors,” Boutros told the judge at a hearing on May 21.
But that doesn’t explain why other prosecutors then tried to stop the judge from reviewing the grand jury transcripts that proved what happened.
Boutros has also tried to contain the damage by dropping the case — and his office recently made the extremely rare move of preemptively offering to pay defense lawyers’ fees.
“As upset as you are and have been, I was upset as well,” he told the judge last month. “I too had not seen conduct like that, and it upset me, which is why we did dismiss that indictment.”
The ordeal cost Mecklenburg her temporary assignment advising Democrats on the Senate Justiciary Committee, a detail that was cut short when NOTUS and other news organizations began asking about her mishandling of the prosecution. However, she remains employed at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago, according to an office roster reviewed by an employee there. Her office phone went unanswered Wednesday morning and her voicemail was full.
The Trump administration has routinely had Main Justice officials at headquarters put pressure on local offices to pursue certain politically charged cases with particularly harsh sentences. Defense lawyers point out, for instance, that associate deputy attorney general Aakash Singh, a high-ranking DOJ official, has a documented history of directing local federal prosecutors.
That’s another reason that Christopher Parente, Joshua Herman and other defense lawyers on the case are now asking for an independent investigator to look into how — and why — the DOJ so aggressively pursued punishment for these street protesters.
“To not appoint a special prosecutor here would enable the government’s strategy to lay all that has happened on a single scapegoat, a convenient outcome for those who are eager to turn the page,” they wrote. “The court has the authority, and we think the obligation, to ensure that those responsible for this unique and sorry chapter … are held to account.”
Judge Perry has not yet ruled on the motion. However, she has moved relatively quickly in this case. Boutros’ office did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning.
Earlier this month, both senators from Illinois, Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, called on Boutros to resign, citing his time in office as “riddled with chaos, deep internal dysfunction, and alleged misconduct.”
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