‘Broadview 6’ trial canceled as prosecutors acknowledge misconduct before grand jury

CHICAGO — In a dramatic final twist to the highest-profile criminal case resulting from “Operation Midway Blitz,” the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday dropped all charges against the remaining “Broadview Six” protesters, citing apparent prosecutorial misconduct in the grand jury proceedings that led to last fall’s indictments.

The case had been scheduled to go to a rare federal misdemeanor trial next week after having been winnowed down from six to four defendants in March before prosecutors suddenly announced their decision to drop the marquee felony conspiracy charge late last month.

But in a stunning turn of events Thursday, a federal judge canceled the trial after a closed-door hearing in which she rebuked prosecutors for both their dealings with the grand jury and for having previously obscured parts of the grand jury transcript that would have revealed their apparent misconduct earlier.

Read more: Remaining ‘Broadview Six’ protesters set for rare federal misdemeanor trial next week

U.S. District Judge April Perry told assistant U.S. attorneys on the case that she was “incredibly shocked” by the redactions in an earlier version of the grand jury transcript compared with the full unredacted version she read earlier this week.

“I have read hundreds — if not thousands — of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. Attorneys who appeared before the grand jury,” Perry said, according to a record of the sealed hearing made public Thursday evening. “I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

In a public hearing convened Thursday afternoon, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros, the Trump administration’s highest-ranking official in Chicago, took the extraordinary step of showing up in person to Perry’s courtroom in order to take responsibility for his office’s actions and ask that the remaining charges be dropped.

Boutros told the judge that it was “ironic” that he’d learned about how “understandably upset” she was after having just returned to his office from celebrating the swearing-in of more than a dozen new assistant U.S. attorneys.

“It is my very sincere belief, your honor, that no prosecutor acted intentionally in misleading you,” Boutros said.

Perry had told the lawyers in the earlier closed-door hearing that there was likely potential for sanctions on assistant U.S. attorneys “for prosecutorial misconduct and for potential ethical violations, including lack of candor to the court.”

‘Prosecutorial vouching’

In that sealed hearing, Perry summarized several issues she said jumped out at her “immediately and glaringly” upon reading the full grand jury transcript. The first of those concerns, according to the judge, was improper “prosecutorial vouching,” in which an assistant U.S. attorney put “her personal credibility and trustworthiness on the line in support of the charges,” Perry said.

The same prosecutor also apparently excused grand jurors “who disagreed with the government’s case” when presented with it during the first of three sessions, asking them “to not partake in the second hearing,” the judge said.

Perry said she understood from the transcripts that there had been “improper prosecutorial communications of a substantive nature with the grand jurors outside of the grand jury room.”

According to the record of Thursday’s closed-door hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Skiba reluctantly pointed the finger at his former colleague Sheri Mecklenberg, who left the U.S. Attorney’s Office in February to serve as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, for which Illinois’ senior U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin serves as the ranking Democrat.

Skiba told Perry that he’d only just started as a prosecutor in July and the grand jury proceedings in the Broadview Six case was only his second time before the grand jury, according to the transcript.

“I am not trying to deflect blame, but I was with a 20-years-plus senior veteran,” Skiba said, reflecting on the “prosecutorial vouching” Perry picked out while reading the grand jury transcripts. “I remember thinking at the time that I would never make that statement as a matter of personal style. What I did not know then, and what only became apparent as we were discussing dismissing these charges, is that’s beyond personal style, and that is, at a minimum, arguably misconduct.”

In the open hearing later, Boutros claimed he was “completely unaware” of the alleged vouching and communications with grand jurors until late last month, when he made the call to drop the felony conspiracy charge. The grand jury only considers felony charges, so the remaining misdemeanor charges against the protester defendants were untainted by the grand jury proceedings.

“I will tell your honor that as upset as you are, and have been — I, too, had not seen conduct like that, and it upset me — which is why we did dismiss that indictment,” Boutros said.

Read more: Conspiracy charge dismissed for ‘Broadview 6’ as other ICE protesters sue over DNA collection | ‘Broadview 6’ defense accuses feds of keeping grand jury transcripts secret, reneging on dropping conspiracy charge | Feds say they’ll drop conspiracy charge against remaining ‘Broadview Six’ protesters

The U.S. attorney said he was aware of the dismissal of grand jurors “in real time.”

“And as soon as I became aware of it, I called off that grand jury session,” he said.

Ultimately, it took three grand jury sessions to get an indictment. The first session resulted in a “no bill,” meaning grand jurors moved not to press charges. And the second, according to the record of Thursday’s closed-door hearing, ended abruptly in the middle of testimony from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent at the center of the incident.

The case stems from a Sept. 26, 2025, demonstration outside an ICE processing facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, which at the time was the epicenter of protests against the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz.”

Social media video of the protest posted by Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, an influencer-turned-congressional candidate, captured the moment she and dozens of others surrounded an ICE vehicle that drove through the crowd, banging on its windows. Others charged include Abughazaleh’s deputy campaign manager, Andre Martin, Oak Park village trustee Brian Straw and Chicago 45th Ward Democratic Committeeman Michael Rabbitt.

The vehicle’s windshield wipers were damaged and someone scratched “PIG” into its side, though the government has acknowledged it isn’t alleging any of the defendants perpetrated those specific acts of vandalism.

Read more: ‘Broadview Six’ plead not guilty to charges of ‘impeding’ agents outside ICE facility | Democratic candidates, officeholders indicted for ‘impeding’ agent outside ICE facility

Within minutes of announcing the decision to drop the charges on Thursday, Boutros switched from his apologetic tone to telling Perry that he’d been prepared to bring the case to trial, defending the charges.

The U.S. attorney referenced the judge’s decision Monday to reject a request from both the government and defense to have the jury take a field trip to the Broadview facility to see. In explaining her ruling, Perry said she didn’t want to risk the jury being tainted by any sort of crowd of protesters. But Boutros misinterpreted that as the judge not wanting to “subject the jurors to a mob scene and the chaos that ensued.”

“And that’s what this case is about,” he said, characterizing the surrounding of the vehicle as “unacceptable in a civilized society.”

“And it is for the grace of God that that agent moved at two miles per hour,” Boutros said. “That the agent didn’t panic and step on the accelerator … or pull out his gun and shoot somebody.”

Perry balked at that, clarifying that she didn’t make the ruling against a jury field trip “so they wouldn’t be exposed to a ‘mob’ like these defendants.” The word “mob” was the subject of some debate during an earlier hearing on Monday before the judge ruled to allow its use during trial.

“Secondly, you are significantly undercutting your mea culpa here by standing behind the charges and continuing to vilify these particular defendants,” Perry said.

Vindictive prosecution?

In the closed-door hearing Thursday, Perry told defense attorneys that she would entertain briefings “and perhaps a hearing on the issue of vindictive prosecution,” based on what she’d learned from the grand jury transcripts. Defense lawyers had already tried to proceed on a similar theory earlier this year, but their claims were focused on whether the Department of Justice had communications about the case with White House officials. When prosecutors in March assured the judge there weren’t, she dismissed the motion.

“We all took the government attorneys’ word on a great many things,” Perry said. “I, at the time, was operating on a presumption of regular grand jury proceedings, which these were very clearly not. So based upon what I’ve seen in the grand jury transcripts, the calculus has changed and it has changed considerably.”

Perry told prosecutors that the trust she normally extended to them “has been broken” by their previous redactions of the grand jury transcripts

Perry was also upset at what she’d discovered had been redacted from the transcripts.

“And frankly, it is that that I find the most problematic,” she said “Mistakes happen. They happen to all of us. But as I tell my children, you own it. You admit to it. You apologize for it, and you move on. What you do not do is hide it.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan told the judge he’d “take responsibility for” the redactions.

Chris Parente, an attorney for Straw and a former assistant U.S. attorney, told reporters after Thursday’s hearing that he had “never even heard of something as bad as … what took place in this grand jury session.”

“We’re talking about continued misconduct by the U.S. attorney’s office, which continued the prosecution that cost these individuals significant attorney’s fees, significant stress … for what?” he said. “I’m sick to my stomach as a former prosecutor. I’m sick to my stomach as a U.S. citizen who has to live in this country with this Department of Justice that is acting this recklessly.”

Nancy DePodesta, an attorney for Rabbitt, said she and the other defense lawyers began requesting the unreacted grand jury transcripts in December, and suggested the prosecutors  “intentionally redacted portions” of the grand jury transcripts to keep the case alive.

“It is shocking. It is absolutely shocking,” said DePodesta, who is also a former assistant U.S. attorney.

When Boutros announced the remaining charges would be dropped, defendants walked from the bench in the courtroom gallery to stand with their attorneys. Abughazaleh clapped a hand over her mouth and embraced Martin. After the hearing, Straw and his wife embraced in the courtroom, crying. Rabbitt and his wife, a nurse who left work in time to take part in the post-hearing news conference, were similarly emotional.

In a Chicago Tribune story this week, Straw said his children had suffered from nightmares since his indictment. But on Thursday afternoon, he told reporters that in the words of his 6-year-old daughter, he was “incredibly proud of being an ‘upstander,’ not a bystander.”

“I wanted to show my kids — and yours — that our country and our future is worth fighting for,” he said. “I will never get the past seven months of my life back. The government tried to break my spirit.”

Abughazaleh, who came in second in a crowded primary race for Illinois’ 9th congressional district in March, pointed back to the purpose of the protest she and the others took part in against the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign, and said the indictment was one of intimidation to others.

“The point of cases like this is the financial and psychological torture,” she said. “This is what this government is trying to do.”

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