A federal judge on Thursday dropped the controversial conspiracy charge lodged against the four remaining members of the “Broadview Six,” a group of protesters who work in Democratic politics and were charged over a demonstration during the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation push last year.
“Congratulations, you all are no longer charged with felonies,” U.S. District Judge April Perry told the defendants.
The case, one of the most high-profile prosecutions to come out of the Operation Midway Blitz, has now been turned into a misdemeanor matter.
It stems from a protest outside the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement facility in suburban Broadview on Sept. 26, 2025. The defendants are accused of surrounding an ICE agent’s vehicle, pushing it and causing damage.
The defendants are former congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, Oak Park village trustee Brian Straw, 45th Ward Democratic committeeperson Michael Rabbitt and Andre Martin, a member of Abughazaleh’s campaign staff. Former Cook County Board candidate Catherine “Cat” Sharp and musician Joselyn Walsh were also charged, but their cases were dropped in March.
If convicted, the four remaining defendants now face up to a year in prison for forcibly impeding a federal agent, as opposed to six years in prison for felony conspiracy. “Your clients just benefited greatly,” Perry told defense attorneys after dropping the felony count.
Still, the sudden dismissal has prompted defense attorneys to raise further questions about the grand jury proceedings that led to the indictment on that count. Earlier this month, they requested to see portions of the grand jury transcripts that showed how prosecutors explained the conspiracy law to the grand jury.
Prosecutors were set to hand over unredacted transcripts to Perry last week, but instead announced they would drop the felony conspiracy charge. Perry then decided she no longer needed to see the transcripts.
But on Monday, defense attorneys said prosecutors had decided to keep the conspiracy charge pending until the newly filed misdemeanor case was settled at trial. By Wednesday, prosecutors filed their own motion to dismiss the conspiracy charge “to avoid what would surely be further unnecessary and time-consuming litigation, not to mention a waste of this Court’s resources.”
After Judge Perry granted the government’s motion to dismiss on Thursday, Straw’s attorney, Christopher Parente, again requested that she review the transcripts and share them with the defense. Parente questioned why the government went through the trouble of bringing the new misdemeanor charge, which he said is identical to the original indictment.
During Thursday’s hearing, Parente called the maneuver a “shell game.”
“There’s no rational reason to do that, other than to protect what occurred behind closed doors in the grand jury room,” Parente said after the hearing.
But prosecutors argued there was “nothing remotely unusual, let alone nefarious, about that state of affairs” in their motion to dismiss the felony.
On Thursday, Perry said there were only 20 to 30 redacted lines of the transcript she hasn’t seen. In response, Parente said he believes “prosecutors can do a lot of damage in 30 lines.”
The defense team has already laid out three possible theories for what they believe could be in the transcripts: a prosecutor “mis-instructed” the grand jury on the law; failed to instruct the grand jury on the law at all; or there were other interactions between the prosecutor and the grand jury that are “otherwise improper or prejudicial.”
The case is due back in court May 18, when Perry will hear arguments on the transcripts. It’s set to go to trial on May 26.