US Attorney Andrew Boutros ordered to testify under oath about alleged ‘Broadview Six’ improprieties

A federal judge on Monday ordered embattled U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros and several underlings to testify under oath later this month about alleged misconduct in the failed “Broadview Six” case against a group of Operation Midway Blitz protesters.

Boutros, who is Chicago’s top federal law enforcement officer, must appear for live testimony Nov. 16, said U.S. District Judge April Perry. The judge also ordered three assistant prosecutors, William Hogan, Matthew Skiba and Andres Almendarez, to appear on the same date.

The judge’s order marks a rapid escalation of the long-simmering case and sets the stage for a virtually unprecedented hearing, with the U.S. attorney himself being questioned under penalty of perjury.

Perry said Boutros also will have to answer questions about his statements to her on May 21, the day he announced he was dropping all charges against the Broadview defendants, and his office’s “repeated failures” to correct Perry’s misconception that the transcript redactions were minor and appeared to be only about technical issues.

It has since been revealed Boutros’ office redacted large swaths of the transcripts indicating serious misconduct by the lead prosecutor, then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg, including improperly “vouching” for the strength of the case before the grand jury. That Oct. 9 session ended with a rare “no bill” vote from the grand jury declining to approve the felony indictment.

Perry did not specifically request testimony from Mecklenburg, who has since retired under protest and alleged in court that Boutros threw her under the bus to protect himself. But it was clear from Perry’s order that she’d like to hear from anyone who will help her get to the bottom of what happened.

“The Court will also accept testimony from any former or current employee of the U.S. Attorney’s Office or federal law enforcement agency who has first-hand knowledge about the above events and who wants to ensure a full and accurate record is presented,” Perry wrote.

In one remarkable section of her seven-page order, Perry all but accused Boutros of misleading her when he claimed he had not known about Mecklenburg’s vouching until months later, when it has since been revealed that he was emailed an expedited transcript of the grand jury proceedings five days after it happened.

“(Boutros’) statements are hard to credit,” Perry wrote. “Grand jury ‘no bills’ are exceedingly rare. To anyone who has been a federal prosecutor, a no bill would be an immediate red flag that something has gone very wrong in the grand jury.”

Perry noted that under federal court rules, Boutros would have had to personally OK a second attempt at an indictment.

“The idea that USA Boutros would have made such a significant decision without reviewing the best evidence available to him about what went wrong in the grand jury is nearly unfathomable,” Perry said.

The judge also blasted the Department of Justice for what appeared to her to be a last-minute attempt to “inject unnecessary delay into these proceedings” by having Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward intervene on Friday — the day that the U.S. attorney’s office had been scheduled to hand over discovery materials to her.

Instead, Woodward filed a defiant brief declaring the government “has not agreed to cooperate” with any investigation into wrongdoing and asking Perry to provide justification for it. Woodward argued the Justice Department did not construe her minute order “as a directive creating any obligation to produce any information” because it used terms like “ask” and “request.”

Perry was obviously not pleased with what she called the “professed confusion.”

“To be clear: the factual basis for the Court’s inquiry is not a mystery to anyone who has had any involvement with this case or even conducted a cursory review of the docket,” the judge wrote in her order.

In apparent response to claims she’d been vague, Perry went so far as to define “must” when it came to her order that Boutros “must appear to testify.”

“The Court uses ‘must’ in a legal sense, which is to say it is mandatory,” Perry wrote in a footnote.

In her order, Perry also said that by inserting himself into the case, Woodward has strengthened the argument that the Attorney General’s office is compromised and cannot supervise an investigation of any special counsel into potential contempt charges.

Perry also is not letting the government off the hook on providing the promised discovery, ordering it produced by 5 p.m. Thursday.

The order marked yet another dramatic twist in the long-running legal drama of the Broadview Six, which stemmed from the charging of six protesters during Operation Midway Blitz a year ago.

The case collapsed in May amid allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, and Perry has since begun an inquiry that could lead to sanctions or even appointment of special counsel to investigate criminal contempt charges.

Perry had ordered the U.S. attorney’s office to turn over her discovery requests by Friday, including written communications with anyone outside the office regarding “investigatory or charging decisions” as well as an email sent to Boutros attaching an expedited transcript of grand jury proceedings.

Instead, the two assistant U.S. attorneys who had been handling the case for Boutros’ office since the summer, Nathaniel Whalen and Diane MacArthur, both filed motions earlier Friday seeking to withdraw.

Perry granted those motions on Monday.

The developments came on the same day that ex-Chicago FBI boss Douglas DePodesta filed a bombshell lawsuit against Boutros and top officials in the Department of Justice, claiming he was scapegoated by Boutros for the failed Broadview Six case.

In the suit, DePodesta alleged he and Boutros met personally with now-Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and others at the Chicago FBI headquarters on Oct. 7, 2025, just two days before Boutros’ office first took the case to the grand jury.

DePodesta’s lawsuit clearly caught the attention of Perry, who referenced it in her order when she discussed how the U.S. attorney’s office has been “cagey” about its communications with officials in Washington.

Specifically, she noted Hogan’s “inflammatory” claim in a court filing that any allegation of DOJ interference was “the product of fevered paranoia and delusional speculation.”

If DePodesta’s lawsuit is accurate, Perry wrote, any meeting he had with Boutros and Blanche “would have been covered by the discovery request and directly contradicts AUSA Hogan’s assertions to the Court.”

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com