U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros announced plans Monday to review nearly 20 years of grand jury proceedings involving a veteran prosecutor at the center of the tainted “Broadview Six” case as he moved to permanently drop charges in another case she handled where similar misconduct claims have surfaced.
Boutros personally filed a nine-page motion dropping charges tied to a 2018 arson at a West Side grocery store, using the document to make the case that “the presumption of regularity to which [the government] is entitled under the law should not be shaken.”
The top prosecutor was referring to the legal principle that assumes federal officials are acting in good faith — a presumption that’s been questioned by multiple judges in recent weeks.
Ten defendants in three cases handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg have now seen their federal charges permanently dropped as a result of the grand jury controversy in Boutros’ office. The defendants in the 2018 arson case were Alla Ishkirat, Tawfik “Mike” Salman, Larry Moneyham and Lonniel “Rudy” Nelson Jr.
U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman granted Boutros’ motion shortly after it was filed.
The motion lays out several comments made by Mecklenburg to grand jurors that would appear inappropriate. They included Mecklenburg telling grand jurors she “can prove this case,” that “we don’t catch the smart ones,” that “most of them aren’t as smart as they think” and “the white-collar guys think they are the smartest in the world.”
The comments were apparently made without a court reporter present, because they’re “not contained in any transcript,” Boutros wrote. His office also reviewed “available audio,” his motion said.
Defense attorneys asked Gettleman to dismiss the charges last week, but Boutros made clear in his motion that “the U.S. attorney’s decision to dismiss with prejudice was also made before the defense filed their motion to dismiss on June 18, 2026.”
Boutros said his office will be conducting “an individualized review and assessment of all available grand jury minutes” of Mecklenburg’s Northern District of Illinois tenure since 2007, estimating that review will encompass “more than 100 grand jury cases.”
And, as part of an ongoing reform process in Boutros’ office, “under no circumstances are prosecutors to redact what they understand or perceive as the irrelevant portions of the transcripts submitted to the court for review,” he wrote.
“That way the court never receives redacted transcripts,” Boutros added.
Questions remain about who redacted Mecklenburg’s allegedly improper statements from transcripts given to U.S. District Judge April Perry in the “Broadview Six” case against six Operation Midway Blitz protesters.
Redacted transcripts were given to Perry in April, after Mecklenburg left the U.S. attorney’s office for a temporary detail with the Senate Judiciary Committee. Defense attorneys have alleged a broader cover-up.
Christopher Parente, whose firm represents Ishkirat, raised doubts about Boutros’ latest announcement. Parente also represents Oak Park village trustee Brian Straw, who is among the former “Broadview Six” defendants.
“While I appreciate U.S. Attorney Boutros finally recognizing there is a credibility problem at his U.S. attorney’s office,” Parente said, “make no mistake that he and others had advance knowledge of these issues for months and did nothing to ‘remediate’ the problem when it became known to them and instead attempted to redact their way out of trouble.
“I do not trust those whose first instinct is to hide the truth to design the process of remediating its wrongs,” Parente added.
Parente and his co-counsel in the “Broadview Six” case have asked Perry to appoint a special counsel to investigate — and possibly prosecute — Boutros and other Justice Department officials in Chicago and Washington, D.C., for criminal contempt.
The four who saw their charges dropped in that case as a result of Mecklenburg’s apparent misconduct were Straw, former congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, 45th Ward Democratic committeeperson Michael Rabbitt and Abughazaleh campaign worker Andre Martin.
Boutros’ office later did the same for Mahmood Sami Khan and Suhaib Ahmad Chaudhry, who were described as “low level” defendants in a $300 million fraud prosecution involving former Loretto Hospital chief financial officer Anosh Ahmed.
Had those charges not been dropped, U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman likely would have held an evidentiary hearing last week that could have put Boutros on the witness stand.