Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros confirmed Friday an “ongoing” review of grand jury presentations by his office that might have been tainted similarly to the case of the “Broadview Six,” which derailed Thursday amid revelations of apparent prosecutorial misconduct during grand jury proceedings.
A pair of high-profile fraud cases tied to Loretto Hospital are among those that could be affected by any such review. That’s because Sheri Mecklenburg, once the lead “Broadview Six” prosecutor who appeared before the grand jury, participated in the Loretto-related indictments.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s office also announced that Mecklenburg had been “terminated” from her temporary role with the Senate Judiciary Committee, which earlier this year drew her away from what’s now an embarrassing case against six people who protested the Operation Midway Blitz deportation campaign in Broadview.
Mecklenburg could not be reached for comment Friday.
Finally, Oak Park village trustee Brian Straw — among those charged in the “Broadview Six” case — asked U.S. District Judge April Perry for an order preserving any emails, text messages or other communications relating to the grand jury proceedings in that prosecution.
Straw’s attorneys, Christopher Parente and Damon Cheronis, wrote in a court filing that they’d “lost complete faith and confidence in [Chicago’s] U.S. Attorney’s Office to do the right thing on its own.”
It’s likely just the beginning of the fallout from Thursday’s dramatic disclosure of alleged prosecutorial misconduct, which Perry said left her “incredibly shocked.” She said “trust has been broken” with Boutros’ office.
“As soon as we learned of the conduct in the grand jury, we immediately moved to dismiss the indictment in [the ‘Broadview Six’] case and proactively initiated an immediate review of those grand jury presentations that could have been impacted in a similar fashion,” Boutros said in a statement Friday. “That review is ongoing.”
Such a review is likely to include other cases handled by the “Broadview Six” prosecutors.
Defense attorneys are sure to begin raising questions about the feds’ conduct in other cases. Joshua Herman, attorney for former congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, told reporters Thursday there is a “permanent adverse inference that will be drawn against the Department of Justice based on this ongoing misconduct that is happening here and is happening elsewhere.”
Abughazaleh faced charges in the “Broadview Six” case along with Straw and then-Cook County Board candidate Catherine “Cat” Sharp, 45th Ward Democratic committeeperson Michael Rabbitt, musician Joselyn Walsh and Abughazaleh campaign worker Andre Martin.
Charges against Sharp and Walsh were dropped in March. Boutros dropped charges against the remaining defendants Thursday while insisting he’d only learned of the apparent misconduct by his prosecutors in late April.
Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi temporarily appointed Boutros to his job in April 2025. As that appointment expired last summer, Chicago’s federal judges chose Boutros to serve on a more permanent basis.
U.S. District Chief Judge Virginia Kendall has declined to comment on Thursday’s revelations, citing the judicial code of conduct through a spokesman.
The “Broadview Six” case fell apart days before trial after Perry discovered conduct during grand jury proceedings, including a prosecutor improperly putting her personal credibility on the line to support criminal charges, a prosecutor having substantive contact with grand jurors outside the grand jury room, and a prosecutor excusing grand jurors who disagreed with the case.
It all came to light only after a lengthy push by defense attorneys to get Perry to review unredacted transcripts of the proceedings.
Also involved in the “Broadview Six” case were assistant U.S. attorneys William Hogan, Matthew Skiba and Andres Almendarez. Courtroom commentary indicated that Skiba and Mecklenburg appeared before the grand jury, with Skiba as the junior prosecutor who had just joined the office in July.
Mecklenburg left the case to serve as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, part of a temporary Justice Department detail that has now ended, according to Durbin’s office.
“Senator Durbin agrees with Judge Perry’s concerns about this deeply flawed prosecution,” a Durbin spokesperson said Friday. “Our office had no knowledge of this alleged misconduct until [Thursday’s] reporting. While the Senate Judiciary Committee doesn’t directly employ Sheri Mecklenburg, because of the gravity of the charges in this case, her detail from the Department of Justice has been terminated.”
Mecklenburg also has been involved in the prosecution of two fraud cases involving former Loretto executive Anosh Ahmed, accused of swindling the hospital and the federal government out of millions in separate schemes.
Scandal surrounding the hospital dates back to early 2021, when Block Club Chicago reported the hospital had shared COVID-19 vaccines with employees at Trump Tower, where Ahmed had a condo.
At that time, the vaccines were just becoming available and were still rare.