Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros argued late Tuesday that it’s unnecessary to appoint an outside lawyer to probe for misconduct or potentially impose sanctions in the tainted “Broadview Six” case that has created a lasting credibility crisis for his office.
In a 52-page court filing, Boutros pushed back on motions by four of the six Operation Midway Blitz protesters urging U.S. District Judge April Perry to hold a hearing, open criminal contempt proceedings or appoint a special counsel to investigate the apparent prosecutorial misconduct that tanked the case.
Boutros said steps have already been taken to address longtime Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg’s handling of the grand jury that handed up indictments against the six Broadview defendants.
He noted that his office has dropped their charges and agreed to cover attorneys’ fees, implemented “robust root-cause changes” and started the process of reviewing over 1,000 grand jury minutes “to determine that similar errors do not exist in other cases.”
But Boutros also noted that his office had endured a stinging rebuke by Perry “that has garnered widespread attention.”
During the May hearing where Boutros announced the permanent dismissal of charges against the four remaining Broadview defendants, Perry said she had “never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”
In Tuesday’s filing, Boutros said the Broadview case was mishandled “during a time of immense pressure, upheaval, and emotion in the District because of Operation Midway Blitz,” the Trump administration’s pummeling deportation campaign in the Chicago area last fall.
The six defendants in the case, most of whom were involved in Democratic politics, were accused of a conspiracy to impede a federal agent outside of a holding facility for detained immigrants in suburban Broadview last September. Prosecutors alleged that a crowd pushed and damaged the federal agent’s SUV.
But Perry has said the transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that culminated in the indictments revealed three types of wrongdoing. Mecklenburg put her personal credibility on the line to support the charges, excused grand jurors who disagreed with the feds’ case and acknowledged she’d had conversations with grand jurors outside the grand jury room, records show.
“There can be no doubt that mistakes were made in the prosecution of this case,” Boutros acknowledged in his filing. “That is why the United States Attorney’s Office has dismissed all charges and is not contesting former Defendants’ entitlement to attorneys’ fees. It is also why the United States Attorney has implemented substantial root-cause reforms as part of a remediation plan.”