The federal prosecutor whose nearly two decades of work in Chicago is going under a microscope tackled one of the city’s top fraud investigations before the “Broadview Six” case led to multiple claims that she’d acted improperly while seeking indictments from grand jurors.
But defense attorneys who exposed the alleged wrongdoing by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg say the need for accountability in U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros’ office goes beyond one person.
In fact, they asked a judge last week to appoint a special counsel who would investigate Boutros and others for criminal contempt, in part “because of what appears to be a determined effort to blame a single prosecutor.”
Now, Boutros has announced plans to review Mecklenburg’s work before grand jurors dating all the way back to 2007, a process he said would “likely lead to the review of grand jury minutes in more than 100 grand jury cases.”
Mecklenburg’s most significant prosecutions are aimed at former Loretto Hospital chief financial officer Anosh Ahmed. But she’s also helped secure prison sentences for fraudsters accused of swindling hefty sums out of private business and charity.
No change in her employment status has been announced since the scandal broke last month. A Boutros spokesman referred questions to Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C., who did not respond to a message from the Chicago Sun-Times.
Sergio Acosta, Mecklenburg’s attorney, declined to comment.
Boutros made his announcement Monday after a series of revelations led judges to ask whether they can still rely on information coming from Boutros’ office under a legal doctrine known as the “presumption of regularity.” It assumes federal officials are acting in good faith.
Ten defendants in three cases have seen their federal charges permanently dropped in the last month, all as a result of apparent misconduct by Mecklenburg before grand juries.
That doesn’t include three defendants whose charges were temporarily dropped amid an unrelated controversy tied to the attempted robbery of undercover federal officers in Country Club Hills.
Questions remain about the role of Boutros and others in the grand jury scandal. Most of all, it remains unclear who was involved in the redaction of Mecklenburg’s allegedly improper statements from transcripts given to U.S. District Judge April Perry in the “Broadview Six” case.
That was the conspiracy case brought against six Operation Midway Blitz protesters last fall.
Prosecutors gave Perry the redacted transcripts in April, two months after Mecklenburg left the U.S. attorney’s office for a temporary detail with the Senate Judiciary Committee. Prosecutors also did not correct Perry when she suggested the redactions were likely “IT issues.”
When Perry finally got her hands on unredacted versions of the transcripts, she said they revealed three types of prosecutorial misconduct.
Mecklenburg allegedly put her own credibility on the line to support criminal charges, an improper practice known as “vouching.” She excused grand jurors who disagreed with the feds’ case, records show. And she spoke with grand jurors outside of the grand jury room, according to the transcripts.
But Perry called the redactions “the most problematic” issue of all.
“Mistakes happen,” Perry said. “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, “I’ll take responsibility for it.” But defense attorneys later insisted “what occurred over the course of this deeply flawed prosecution clearly goes well beyond the mistake of any single assistant United States attorney.”
Boutros’ office is expected to respond to the request for a special counsel in the “Broadview Six” case by July 7. But Monday, Boutros revealed his plan to “ensure the absence of grand jury irregularities” in indicted cases and “restore the judiciary’s, defense bar’s, and public’s confidence in the grand jury practices and proceedings of the district.”
The review of Mecklenburg’s cases will be part of that effort, Boutros said. It’s likely little can be done for fully resolved cases, he added.
Mecklenburg’s past cases include the 2017 fraud prosecution of a high-ranking financial executive who handed his corporate credit card over to an escort he’d met online. Together, the couple cheated the drug device company Nemera out of nearly $5.8 million.
During closing arguments in the 2019 trial of Crystal Lundberg, one of the two defendants, Mecklenburg told jurors “don’t let her pull the wool over your eyes. Hold her accountable. Hold her responsible.”
Lundberg wound up with a 53-month prison sentence.
Mecklenburg also secured a 41-month prison sentence for a onetime disabled children’s charity director who she said stole nearly $1 million from the organization.
It’s unclear whether either case would be part of Boutros’ grand jury review. Mecklenburg does not appear to have been the prosecutor who secured the indictment in the 2017 fraud prosecution. The children’s charity director pleaded guilty, waiving his right to indictment.
Mecklenburg more recently participated in two fraud cases against Ahmed and others. They followed controversy involving Loretto Hospital’s distribution of COVID-19 vaccines at Trump Tower, where Ahmed had a condo, which was first reported by Block Club Chicago.
Boutros’ office has already dropped charges against two “low level” defendants caught up in one of those prosecutions after U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman threatened to hold an evidentiary hearing over the grand jury controversy in the U.S. attorney’s office.
Prosecutors avoided that hearing by dropping the charges. Still, when the feds came to court to make it official, Coleman did not focus on Mecklenburg.
Rather, the judge asked, “where is Mr. Boutros?”
“It’s not a one-man show,” Coleman said. “[And] if there is a one-man show … it’s the U.S. attorney. He decides. … That’s why he’s got the big job.”
Contributing: Sophie Sherry