Crime & Law

Normally Secret Grand Jury Transcripts From Failed ‘Broadview Six’ Prosecution Expected to be Released

Transcripts detailing federal prosecutors’ alleged misconduct during multiple grand jury proceedings in the “Broadview Six” case are expected to be released publicly after the politically charged case fell apart last week.

Defense attorneys for the former defendants had sought the explosive transcripts, which are typically kept secret, after Chicago’s U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros dismissed the remaining charges in the case last week.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur on Tuesday said the government would not object to their release, subject to the redaction of grand jurors’ personal information. That release is not expected to occur at least until sometime next month.

Whatever happened during those secret hearings led to defense attorneys accusing prosecutors of a “scandal” and a cover up, a federal judge saying her trust in the prosecutors handling the case was “broken” and Boutros issuing a public apology.

Defense attorney Chris Parente on Tuesday also suggested he has some reason to believe Boutros himself had some type of “personal contact” with the grand jury. No further details about this were shared in open court, but the matter was seemingly discussed further during a sidebar in the chambers of U.S. District Judge April Perry. 

Defense attorneys also sought the release of audio tapes from those hearings in order to give a better idea of the “tone” of conversations between prosecutors and members of the grand jury.

“I think the tone leaps off the page in many cases,” Perry said of the transcripts.

After the case collapsed last week, defense attorneys sought a preservation order requiring prosecutors to maintain “all material information related to this scandal” after they said they have “lost complete faith and confidence in this U.S. Attorney’s Office to do the right thing on its own.”

But MacArthur on Tuesday said her office is already subject to the Federal Records Act, which requires the preservation of such documents, and has taken additional steps since late last week to ensure all records relating to the failed prosecution are being maintained.

That includes a litigation hold placed on prosecutors covering all texts, emails and other communications about the case and grand jury transcript redactions.

In a remarkable turn last week, Boutros appeared before Perry to apologize for his prosecutors’ conduct and announce that his office would be dismissing all charges against the remaining four defendants — former 9th District congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, her campaign staffer Andre Martin, Oak Park Village Board Trustee Brian Straw and Democratic Committeeperson Michael Rabbitt.

That trial had been slated to begin Tuesday morning. Instead, Boutros’ office now faces widespread criticism for its handling of the high-profile case behind closed doors.

Perry previously reviewed redacted versions of transcripts from the grand jury proceedings, but after defense attorneys pushed her to look over the fully unredacted versions of those records, the judge immediately demanded prosecutors appear before her to explain themselves.

Perry last week said she was “incredibly shocked” by the government’s redactions, telling attorneys during a closed-door meeting Thursday that she’s read “hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts” and never seen the “types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

A transcript of that hearing revealed the breadth of the misconduct government prosecutors allegedly engaged in. 

After an initial grand jury refused to indict the six last October, prosecutors allegedly removed some members who disagreed with their theory of the case and presented it again to a second grand jury. Perry found prosecutors had improper ex parte communication with grand jury members outside the confines of the hearing, and engaged in “vouching,” in which they assured grand jury members the case would not have been presented unless the allegations against the defendants were warranted.

None of this conduct was disclosed to Perry or defense attorneys until last week.

“I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing,” Perry said last week. “That trust has been broken.”

Defense attorneys accused the government of a cover up and intend to seek sanctions against the prosecutors involved in the grand jury proceedings. That process is expected to begin as soon as Wednesday with the filing of a 

Last week they also called on U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to launch an investigation into Boutros’ office.

The charges in the Broadview case stem from a confrontation just before 8 a.m. Sept. 26 between protesters and federal agents outside ICE’s west suburban processing facility. Prosecutors alleged the group surrounded a government vehicle, “with the intent to hinder and impede” a federal agent from proceeding to the Broadview facility and “discharging the duties of his office.”

In a video posted to her social media accounts that day, Abughazaleh and more than a dozen other protesters can be seen trying to physically prevent an SUV from entering the facility by pushing back on the car while chanting “up, up with liberation and down, down with deportations.”

MacArthur — a veteran prosecutor who played a key role in the corruption cases against former Ald. Ed Burke and ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan — was the only prosecutor to appear in court for the government during Tuesday’s hearing, replacing the government’s expected trial team of assistant U.S. attorneys William Hogan, Matthew Skiba and Andres Almendarez.

Sheri Mecklenburg was previously the case’s lead prosecutor before leaving for a role with the Senate Judiciary Committee under Durbin. She has since reportedly been terminated from that role following last week’s bombshell revelations.

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