US attorney’s office offers mea culpa in ‘Broadview Six’ case, says no further inquiry warranted

Prosecutors for embattled Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros said in a court filing late Tuesday that while mistakes were made in the now-defunct “Broadview Six” case against immigration protesters, corrective measures have since been taken and there is no evidence of vindictive prosecution that would warrant further hearings or sanctions.

“This case involved irregularities during a time of immense pressure, upheaval, and emotion in the district because of Operation Midway Blitz,” prosecutors said in the long-awaited 55-page motion, which detailed how the office has already been publicly rebuked by the court and had experienced prosecutors put under intense “public and private scrutiny.”

The filing said that “robust root-cause changes” have been implemented involving the handling of grand jury matters, including an ongoing review of “minutes” from as many as 1,000 grand jury proceedings dating back to 2007.

In a rare mea culpa, the U.S. attorney’s office also acknowledged in the filing that it could have been more candid with U.S. District Judge April Perry when it came to redacting large portions of the grand jury transcripts handed over in the Broadview case.

Those redactions ultimately revealed what was Perry described as blatant misconduct by the lead prosecutor and a failing of the “presumption of regularity” that normally exists between the court and the government.

While defense attorneys have asked for a hearing on sanctions and the appointment of special counsel to look into possible contempt charges, the U.S. attorney’s office said in the filing the court’s message “has been clearly heard and there is no need to do more.”

“The Office has not taken lightly this Court’s statement about losing trust,” the filing said. “…The Government’s various actions are a sincere effort to endeavor to restore the judiciary’s, defense bar’s, and public’s confidence in the Office’s grand jury and other practices and proceedings.”

The U.S. attorney’s take on the matter, which was expected, comes nearly two and a half months after the Broadview Six case collapsed days before trial and led to a scandal that is still having repercussions at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, including calls from many local Democrats for Boutros’ resignation.

Lawyers for the former Broadview defendants have two weeks to respond to the prosecution filing, and Perry could rule anytime thereafter.

If the judge does go forward with public hearings, it would escalate the already unprecedented turmoil for Chicago’s storied U.S. attorney’s office, with high-level staff, including potentially Boutros himself, being forced to answer questions under oath about their actions in the Broadview case.

Attorneys for the Broadview Six have believed since the get-go that the decision to indict the group of local Democratic activists for allegedly impeding an ICE agent’s vehicle during a Sept. 26 protest was politically motivated amid pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration to make an example of them.

Boutros, who was first appointed in March 2025 by then-U. S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, has publicly denied bringing any cases for political reasons. In an interview in March to mark his first year on the job, he bristled when asked about that very perception, jabbing a finger on the table and telling reporters for the Tribune and Sun-Times “you should write this down.”

“There’s not a single case involving politics in our decision-making, full stop period,” he said then. “Zero. And anyone who says otherwise is misstating reality, and anyone who says otherwise is an armchair expert who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, period. And I don’t need to say anything else on that.”

The filing by Boutros’ office Tuesday shed little additional light on that issue. But in one footnote, prosecutors acknowledged that there was a “virtual meeting” on Sept. 26 — the day of the Broadview incident — between U.S. Justice Department lawyers in Washington D.C., the Chicago U.S. attorney’s office and other federal law enforcement agencies to discuss issues of violence against immigration officers. In that meeting, a video of the clash in Broadview was played, according to the filing.

“Moreover, as would be expected in the normal course, there were discussions between the Office and Main Justice regarding such things as case updates, especially given the publicity the case generated after it had been charged,” the prosecution filing stated. “These privileged discussions are not only permitted but are contemplated.”

The Broadview Six indictment alleged the defendants, most of whom have ties to local Democratic politics, were part of a group that surrounded an Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle outside the Broadview facility during a Sept. 26 protest and “banged aggressively” on the vehicle’s side and back windows, hood and doors, and crowded together to impede the vehicle. The initial indictment charged them each with a count of felony conspiracy that could have brought up to three years in prison.

When the trial was pending earlier this year, federal prosecutors vehemently denied any political motivation for the charges and said the insinuation of any collaboration with the White House was “the product of fevered paranoia and delusional speculation.”

Perry initially had denied the defense’s request for any emails or other communications Boutros’ office may have had with officials in Washington, saying she trusted prosecutors when they said that no such records existed. She also said it wasn’t “appropriate” to order the U.S. attorney’s office to “report exactly how it went about its searches.”

n the day the Broadview Six case collapsed May 21, Perry told the prosecution team that she’d relied on them as officers of the court because their “sole goal is to do justice.”

“I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing,” Perry said. “That trust has been broken.”

Since then, defense attorneys have renewed their request for any “documents, communications and records,” including emails, texts and cellphone data, between members of Boutros’ office and top officials in the Trump administration, including acting U.S. Attorney Todd Blanche and his top deputy, Aakash Singh.

Singh, who is responsible for coordinating with the 93 U.S. attorneys across the country to advance the president’s law enforcement priorities, has been shown to have micromanaged other immigration-related prosecutions around the same time as Midway Blitz.

Defense attorneys, meanwhile, argue that with issues that likely go up to the highest levels of the Department of Justice, the only way to get to the truth is through the appointment of independent special counsel with subpoena power.

“The public trust cannot and will not be restored by anything less,” the defense said in a recent court filing.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com