Andrew Boutros, a veteran Chicago lawyer and former federal prosecutor, was first floated for the job of interim U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois in March 2025. He was among those vetted for the White House by U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, a Peoria Republican, who conducted several rounds of interviews.
On March 28, Boutros was officially appointed to serve as interim U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Boutros was not among those LaHood recommended for the position, however. By giving Boutros interim status, the White House bypassed the immediate need for Boutros to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
At his swearing-in ceremony, Boutros said: “As U.S. attorney, I am committed to working alongside old and new colleagues to tackle the important problems that face our district.”
Here’s what to know about Boutros’ tenure leading the U.S. attorney’s office.
His first few months
In July 2025, in a sign of unusual times at the Justice Department, a panel of federal judges in Chicago approved Boutros’ appointment by the Trump administration as permanent U.S. attorney in Chicago — a process typically handled by the U.S. Senate. No time frame for Boutros’ term was mentioned in U.S. District Chief Judge Virginia Kendall’s order and his appointment was believed to be open-ended.
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For months into his tenure, the U.S. attorney’s office saw a large turnover in leadership, was buffeted by the government shutdown and thrown headlong into the controversial Operation Midway Blitz immigration enforcement mission.
After dismissing several criminal cases against protesters of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies — including several where a grand jury refused to return an indictment — the U.S. attorney’s office was called to the woodshed in an extraordinary opinion by a federal magistrate judge that lit up the watercooler talk in legal circles.
The judge, Gabriel Fuentes, took the time to opine in a nine-page opinion that he could not “help but note just how unusual and possibly unprecedented it is” for Chicago’s venerable U.S. attorney’s office to bring charges “so hastily” that, once more facts came out, they were unable to obtain an indictment in the grand jury or were forced to dismiss the case as not provable.
Operation Midway Blitz
In an interview with the Tribune after a year on the job, Boutros defended his handling of Operation Midway Blitz cases and said a changeover of the old guard and influx of new prosecutors had reinvigorated an office that aimed to get back to bread-and-butter targets like violent crime, public corruption and fraud.
And with accusations front and center that President Donald Trump had used the Justice Department to go after political enemies, Boutros was adamant in the March interview it hadn’t happened in Chicago.
“There is not a single case involving politics in our decision-making, full stop. Period,” Boutros said, jabbing a finger into the conference table adjacent to his fourth-floor office. “And anyone who says otherwise is misstating reality, and anyone who says otherwise is an armchair expert who doesn’t know what they are talking about.”
Broadview Six
Among the most controversial indictments brought forward by the office in connection with Operation Midway Blitz were the criminal charges against six protesters at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Broadview, known as the “Broadview Six.”
The charges were announced by the Department of Justice with much fanfare, but the case soon showed signs of cracking. The original prosecutor who had led the grand jury left the U.S. attorney’s office in February for a job with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C. Weeks later, all charges against two of the defendants were dismissed. And in April, prosecutors announced the lone felony conspiracy count was also being cut.
As the suddenly low-level case wound its way toward trial, with jury selection set to begin after Memorial Day, U.S. District Judge April Perry whistled prosecutors into court to explain redactions made in the grand jury transcripts that had been given to her for review.
The case then collapsed in dramatic fashion, with Perry describing “shocking” misconduct before the grand jury and Boutros himself appearing in court to apologize and dismiss the charges on the eve of trial.
What to know about the controversial ‘Broadview Six’ case — and its collapse in court
Boutros released a startling report on June 2 acknowledging he appeared before the grand jury in the “Broadview Six” case on the day the indictment was handed up in October, asking for those on the panel who could not keep an open mind on immigration evidence to “please raise your hand.”
Boutros’ rare Oct. 23 appearance at the grand jury came at the height of Operation Midway Blitz and was an attempt to quell discord after a prosecutor had dismissed at least two panel members who had personal issues with the case and refused to deliberate. A previous panel, in fact, had declined to indict at all — issuing a rare “no bill” instead.
It’s unusual for a sitting U.S. attorney to personally appear before any grand jury, but for Boutros to have done so in such a controversial case is sure to fuel allegations of undue pressure to return an indictment.
Scandal spreads
The scandal over the Broadview Six has since spread to other cases, including two high-profile indictments tied to a fraud investigation into former executives at Loretto Hospital on the West Side.
In mid-June, prosecutors moved to permanently dismiss all charges against two defendants who were challenging one of those indictments — involving a massive, $800 million COVID-19 testing fraud scheme that was secured by the same federal prosecutor who handled the Broadview Six case.
Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman had ordered an evidentiary hearing into the allegations of wrongdoing, which could have included sworn testimony from Boutros. That hearing was canceled when Coleman granted the motion to dismiss, but she called out Boutros specifically for what she said is a “Pandora’s box” that has been opened by his office.
“I don’t know if by doing this you get to put everything back in the box,” Coleman said.
As those cases have unraveled, Boutros has also come under national scrutiny when it was revealed his office is leading a criminal investigation into a Chicago-based nonprofit that partially funded legal fees for E. Jean Carroll, the magazine columnist who successfully sued Trump for sexual assault and defamation.
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In a carefully worded statement, Boutros said that reports of him opening any investigation targeting Carroll were “categorically false.”
Meanwhile, Illinois’ two Democratic U.S. senators have since called for Boutros to resign, saying his office has been “riddled with chaos, deep internal dysfunction, and alleged misconduct.”
“He must resign, and there must be an open, transparent, and nonpartisan search to nominate the next U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois,” Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth said in a joint statement.
In early June, more than a hundred former Chicago federal prosecutors released a letter saying actions taken by Boutros and other leaders have “tarnished the reputation of the United States Attorney’s Office.”
The group, which includes former U.S. Attorney Scott Lassar and onetime acting U.S. Attorney Gary Shapiro, also said it is concerned that “once-forbidden political considerations are infecting prosecutorial decisions,” and called on Boutros — who was nominated for the top post by Trump last year — to “stand above and apart from political fealty.”
Boutros defense
While acknowledging his office made missteps in the Broadview Six case, Boutros has fiercely defended his record. After the former prosecutors issued their letter, he put out a lengthy written response defending the cases he’s brought and touting what he described as an ongoing turnaround of a moribund office that had cratering productivity in the years before he took over.
“In every metric, we’ve vigorously brought the full weight of this Office and the federal government against dangerous criminals and serious fraudsters who previously got a pass,” Boutros said. “That’s because irrespective of factionalism, tribalism, or politics, the duty of a prosecutor is to charge good cases against worthy targets and to bring enough cases to discourage the public from committing crimes and to incapacitate specific offenders from re-offending.”
Boutros has also received support from his bosses in Washington.
On June 4, U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former private attorney for Trump who’s been nominated by the president for the permanent attorney general position, came to Boutros’ defense in a lengthy social media post that praised him for “steadfastly” advancing the White House’s mission to make the city “safe for the American people.”
“This department fully supports U.S. Attorney Boutros and his efforts to combat violent crime, drug trafficking, immigration violations, and fraud, and we look forward to more great work from his office,” Blanche said Thursday in a statement posted on X.
Blanche said Boutros has increased indictments by 34% over the previous administration.