Crime & Law
‘Broadview Six’ Seek Special Prosecutor to Investigate U.S. Attorney’s Office Misconduct Allegations
(Department of Justice, Capitol News Illinois)
Attorneys for the former “Broadview Six” defendants are calling for an independent investigation into prosecutorial misconduct allegations, while a top Democratic lawmaker called for a Congressional inquiry into Chicago’s U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros over his mishandling of the botched case.
Defense attorneys late Tuesday filed new motions asking U.S. District Judge April Perry to designate a special counsel to investigate, and if warranted, prosecute members of Boutros’ office for criminal contempt following bombshell allegations of grand jury misconduct.
In that motion, defense attorneys argued Boutros’ office appears to be putting all blame for those actions on one prosecutor — Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg — but they claim the misconduct “runs much deeper and indeed to the highest levels of the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office and likely to the Department of Justice in Washington D.C.”
“To not appoint a special prosecutor here would enable the government’s strategy to lay all that has happened on a single scapegoat, a convenient outcome for those who are eager to turn the page,” the attorneys wrote.
Defense attorneys are also asking Perry for an evidentiary hearing on sanctions for prosecutorial misconduct.
That request came the same day as U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, penned a letter calling on the Office of Professional Responsibility and the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission to launch their own investigations into Boutros’ “appalling” conduct.
He joins a growing list of Democratic lawmakers and ex-federal prosecutors who have publicly criticized Boutros over his office’s mishandling of the case.
“Mr. Boutros’s misconduct has done incalculable damage to public confidence in his office, in the Department of Justice (DOJ), and in the rule of law,” Raskin wrote.
Boutros in a statement Wednesday called Raskin’s letter “incomplete, ill-informed, and severely distorted,” but added that he “fully supports” any investigation by the OPR and ARDC into the Broadview Six prosecution.
“When they do so,” he said, “we are confident that upon careful, unbiased consideration, neither entity will find misconduct by the United States Attorney because there was none.”
Oak Park Village Board Trustee Brian Straw, former 9th District congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, her campaign staffer Andre Martin, Democratic Committeeperson Michael Rabbitt, ex-Cook County Board candidate Catherine Sharp and musician Joselyn Walsh, were charged following a confrontation on Sept. 26 between protesters and federal agents outside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s west suburban processing facility.
Prosecutors alleged the defendants were part of a group that 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.” According to the initial indictment, the protesters “banged aggressively” on the vehicle’s windows and hood and broke one of its mirrors and a rear windshield wiper.
Unsealed transcripts from the grand jury proceedings in that case last October revealed Mecklenburg excused skeptical grand jurors, admitted speaking with grand jurors outside of the hearings and “vouched” for the merits of the allegations against the defendants.
Boutros denied knowing of that alleged misconduct until late April, but defense attorneys have since accused the U.S. Attorney of a cover-up amid their longstanding belief that the charges were politically motivated.
Beyond the Broadview case, the alleged misconduct led to the dismissal of more charges in a separate COVID-19 fraud case presented by Mecklenburg to the same grand jury.
They wrote that the “gross misconduct” of Boutros’ office “shocks the conscience,” while its “extraordinary efforts to conceal such misconduct are even worse.”
“The Court has the authority, and we think the obligation, to ensure that those responsible for this unique and sorry chapter — a chapter which has dramatically impacted the lives of multiple Defendants and enduringly sullied the reputation of the U.S. Attorney’s Office earned over decades — are held to account,” defense attorneys wrote.
