A former FBI supervisor has sued the government over his forced departure from the agency, blowing the whistle on what he alleges was the Trump administration “politically motivated prosecutions” of protesters against its immigration enforcement policies.
Douglas DePodesta, who until July was the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Chicago field office, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit Monday claiming that he was scapegoated for the handling of the “Broadview Six” case — a prosecution that collapsed amid signs of prosecutorial misconduct.
DePodesta alleges the case was pursued in part to sideline a leftist congressional candidate in Chicago. The case against the protesters was dropped in May after federal prosecutors admitted to significant “errors.”
Prosecutors made three attempts to indict the protesters for “assaulting” officers and, after resistance from the grand jury, took the extraordinary step of dismissing jurors who expressed skepticism about the evidence. A leading prosecutor had private conversations with grand jurors in violation of rules expressly forbidding such interactions.
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DePodesta’s lawsuit says he was repeatedly pressured to go along with the targeting of protesters during the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz, when security forces flooded the Chicago area with deportation raids that resulted in thousands of arrests and two people shot by federal agents.
DePodesta describes how he and the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros often disagreed about “whether the FBI would open investigations into politically motivated charges.” And he says that top Justice Department officials were personally involved.
“Persons close to the Trump administration called for criminal prosecution of the protesters, particularly Kat Abughazaleh, who was running for the office of United States Representative at the time,” the lawsuit states.
Abughazaleh lost her primary election bid for the Illinois seat in March, while she was still potentially facing a trial.
DePodesta described an Oct. 7, 2025, meeting in which then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Colin McDonald, FBI Director Kash Patel and Boutros met in DePodesta’s office to discuss the case — an unusual level of involvement for top DOJ officials.
The former FBI field office supervisor noted that these “were not the only communications defendant Boutros had with Washington about bringing charges against public figures who were protesting while the agent drove his SUV through the crowd and about the progress of those cases.”
DePodesta goes on to describe how Boutros repeatedly tried to pressure him.
On one occasion, for example, Boutros sent DePodesta a video of a federal immigration agent having a physical confrontation with a protester. Boutros pressed DePodesta to have an FBI agent write an affidavit saying that the interaction captured in the video was an assault on a federal officer, the lawsuit says.
Both DePodesta and the FBI agent believed that the video did not show an assault on a federal agent but rather incidental touching as a result of the federal immigration agent tackling the protester, the lawsuit says.
DePodesta refused to instruct an FBI agent to draft a sworn affidavit attesting to something he did not believe was true, the lawsuit says, and Boutros was openly hostile in response to DePodesta’s refusal.
“On other occasions, Boutros sent DePodesta emails demanding that DePodesta open FBI investigations into individuals with political views or affiliations in opposition to the Trump administration,” the lawsuit says. “On each occasion, DePodesta asked for factual predication that would justify opening an investigation, in accordance with DOJ regulations and DePodesta’s ethical and professional obligations.”
“When Boutros could not provide adequate predication, DePodesta declined to open investigations. On each occasion, DePodesta’s refusal to open politically motivated investigations without predication was met with hostility from defendant Boutros,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit says that when the high-profile case involving the anti-ICE activists went south, Boutros laid the blame internally on DePodesta — telling superiors at the DOJ that the FBI supervisor “had conspired to destroy the Broadview Six case,” along with his sister-in-law, Nancy DePodesta, who was coincidentally a defense lawyer for one of the protesters charged in the case.
DePodesta said he got the heads-up from FBI Deputy Director Christopher Raia, who offered reassurances that were echoed by FBI Associate Deputy Director B. Chad Yarbrough in June. However, the lawsuit claims Yarbrough changed course a month later as the lie kept swirling.
“Yarbrough added that defendant Patel did not want the controversy, and defendant Patel therefore insisted that DePodesta needed to be terminated, regardless of the truth of Boutros’ allegations about DePodesta,” the lawsuit says.
The complaint then points to a private text message from Raia that said, “Hey Doug, Chris Raia here. I wanted to reach out and personally apologize for the way things went down last week and not being able to change it. Also, wanted to personally thank you for your leadership and all the hard work for the 24 years you gave to the FBI. You are widely respected in Chicago (and the FBI) and will be missed. The person replacing you will have big shoes to fill.”
On Monday, Abughazaleh told The Washington Sun that “this is exactly what we’ve thought probably happened since I was indicted. But it’s still surreal (and vindicating) to see it in writing.”
“Our case has been a spectacular failure for this administration, shedding light on corruption in the grand jury process, scapegoating throughout the DOJ, and now explicit attempts to politically prosecute — and therefore threaten, censor, and jeopardize — candidates who threaten this administration’s fascist agenda,” she said.
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