A federal judge on Thursday said she’d initiate a “fact finding” process to determine whether the U.S. attorney’s office intentionally misled her in the “Broadview Six” case, a rare step that could lead to sanctions or even appointment of a special prosecutor to bring criminal contempt charges.
The decision by U.S. District Judge April Perry puts Chicago’s premier federal law enforcement office in largely uncharted waters and adds fuel to a scandal that erupted four months ago, when U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros dismissed all charges against the six Operation Midway Blitz protesters amid allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
In announcing the move at the end of an hourlong hearing, Perry illustrated her thinking with a quote from Spider-Man — “with great power comes great responsibility” — and by invoking the old adage that the cover-up is often worse than the crime. She said given the massive power wielded by federal prosecutors, they have a duty to be truthful and that any attempt to willfully deceive the court could and should be punished.
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While Perry made no finding at this point that there was intentional misconduct in the Broadview case, the judge said it was clear that “several aspects of this prosecution were very flawed” and that certain representations made to her by Boutros’ office were not accurate. She also said whether a cover-up occurred to hide illegal conduct — or maybe simply something that was “embarrassing” — does not matter.
“It is clear to me that the mistakes and inaccuracies were material,” Perry said. “They affected the trajectory of the case and how long those defendants were subject to criminal prosecution. It affected not only their pocketbooks, but their lives.”
Perry’s inquiry will begin with discovery requests to the U.S. attorney’s office, which are sure to include any correspondence with top officials in the Department of Justice about the case as well as internal communications in Boutros’ office as it began to collapse. To maintain the adversarial process, Perry said she will appoint University of Chicago law professor William Baude to help serve as a liaison for her requests.
Any response from the U.S. attorney’s office will be “under oath, under penalty of perjury,” Perry said. She also said her inquiry would not be focused on any misconduct before the grand jury, which is no longer on the table because the charges have been dismissed.
“My sole focus at this point is on the lack of candor, concealment of material facts, or other misconduct that occurred before me,” Perry said.
After the hearing, attorney Christopher Parente, who represents Oak Park Trustee and former defendant Brian Straw, hailed Perry’s decision as a message “that no one is above the law.”
“They dragged these six people behind me through the mud for over a year, and now the tables have turned,” Parente told reporters in the lobby of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. “…They tried to redact their way out of this and they got caught. (Perry) is going to find out the truth about what happened, and if Andrew Boutros or any of his employees lied to the court, she will discover it and she will punish them.”
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.
The fallout from the high-profile Broadview Six case has sparked national attention, and Perry’s 17th floor courtroom was filled to capacity for Thursday’s arguments. Five of the six former defendants were present, including Straw, former Congressional candidate Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, her campaign aide Andre Martin, onetime candidate for Cook County commissioner Catherine Sharp, and attorney Michael Rabbitt.
Also listening from the courtroom gallery were several top deputies in Boutros’ office, including First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Yonan. Boutros did not attend.
Attorneys for the Broadview Six have said they believe the decision to indict the group of local Democratic activists for allegedly impeding an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent’s vehicle during a Sept. 26, 2025, protest was politically motivated amid pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration to make an example of them.
Boutros, who was first appointed in March 2025 by then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, has publicly denied bringing any cases for political reasons. In a filing explaining their position in August, prosecutors said that while mistakes were made, corrective measures have since been taken and there is no evidence of vindictive prosecution that would warrant further hearings or sanctions.
The crisis that has enveloped the U.S. attorney’s office over the past four months has spread far beyond just the Broadview case, with Boutros announcing a top-to-bottom review of grand jury practices and his office dismissing charges in a half dozen other cases that involved the same prosecutor.
The inquiry launched by Perry on Thursday marked perhaps the most serious exposure for the long-heralded office since allegations of wrongdoing in the El Rukn gang cases more than 30 years ago.
During Thursday’s hearing, all parties, including the judge, seemed to acknowledge that they were heading down a path that had little legal precedent.
At one point, Perry described the U.S. attorney’s offices’ position as “play Magic 8 ball — we’ll shake it and see what happens.” Later, she labeled arguments by prosecutors about the possible appointment of a special prosecutor as “kind of circular.”
When Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Whalen told the judge he believed it would be unconstitutional for her to appoint any attorney who was “not subject to Attorney General review” to serve as special counsel, Perry leaned forward on the bench and said, “How would you envision that looking, then?”
“What part?” Whalen responded.
“The part where I appoint an independent person in the interest of justice to investigate the Department of Justice, and that person is being supervised by the Department of Justice,” Perry said.
Meanwhile, the timeline that has emerged since all charges were dismissed shows the Broadview case was beset by controversy from its inception.
The grand jury originally refused to approve the indictment on Oct. 9, 2025, and a second session was called off by Boutros’ office after the lead prosecutor, Sheri Mecklenburg, reported that at least two jurors were excused from voting because they could not be impartial, court records show. Those jurors eventually returned for a third session on Oct. 23 and returned an indictment charging the defendants with a felony conspiracy.
After Mecklenburg withdrew in February due to an unrelated government assignment to Washington D.C., a new team of prosecutors continued to insist there was no evidence whatsoever that the case had been directed by bosses in the Department of Justice. They also handed over heavily redacted copies of grand jury transcripts for Perry to review that blacked out misconduct that had occurred in those sessions, including Mecklenburg improperly “vouching” for the case in her original presentation, records show.
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The new prosecution team, headed by veteran Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan, who ironically was at the center of the El Rukn controversy in the 1990s, first dismissed two of the defendants from the case, then abruptly dropped the felony conspiracy count and announced plans to go to trial on misdemeanors.
Boutros has said he made that decision in late April after he finally was made aware for the first time of Mecklenburg’s vouching. His office has said that by dropping the felony, any issues in front of the grand jury were moot.
Eventually, all charges were dropped days before trial after Perry was finally given the full, unredacted grand jury transcripts and scolded prosecutors for violating the inherent trust placed in the office.
The turmoil in the case deepened last week when Mecklenburg, who had been placed on administrative leave, penned a fiery resignation letter to Boutros claiming he “personally directed” her to seek felony charges rather than misdemeanors and then “publicly vilified” her in court by blaming her for the way the case melted down.
Mecklenburg’s attorneys, Sergio Acosta and Joel Bertocchi, appeared in court Thursday, where Perry granted their motion to intervene in any future sanctions hearing. The judge said doing so was “necessary” given that the stakes were “very personal, very high” and that Mecklenburg’s interests would likely not align with those of her former office.
One area of inquiry that Perry will surely pursue is whether Trump administration officials had any role in the decision to bring charges against the Broadview Six.
While Boutros’ office has denied getting any direction from Washington, they did acknowledge that a virtual meeting took place on Sept. 27, 2025 — the day after the clash outside the Broadview facility — with Justice Department officials, the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s office, and other federal law enforcement, during which a video of the incident was played.
Attorneys for the former defendants have also alleged Aakash Singh, a top deputy for U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, had a vested interest in the case, pointing specifically to a social media post by a top supporter of Singh’s on the day of the Broadview incident saying: “Dear Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros… where are the arrests of Kat Abughazaleh and others?”
On Thursday, Perry asked Whalen how his office could possibly claim that certain emails would be off-limits to her inquiry if those emails never existed.
“I was told that there were no relevant communications at all. Period. Hard stop,” Perry said. “If in fact there are none, what privilege could possibly exist here?”
Whalen tried to clarify that they were not arguing there were no communications, just none before the decision was made to pursue the indictment that the “front office” was aware of.
“‘The front office is not aware’ is different from ‘there are no communications,'” Perry said. “I appreciate you trying to clarify (but) that is a highly ambiguous statement.”
Another issue that Perry could choose to delve into is why Boutros was emailed an expedited copy of the original grand jury session — and whether he opened it. Boutros has claimed that he doesn’t remember seeing it in October 2025 and is “quite certain” he didn’t read it until some six months later, when the decision to drop the felony charges was being discussed.
But Mecklenburg’s motion to intervene stated she “expressly and immediately advised the U.S. Attorney and other members of the Front Office” after the grand jury returned a no-bill on Oct. 9, 2025, and that Boutros himself directed her to order an expedited copy of the transcript.
“She did so and promptly sent it to the Front Office, including the U.S. Attorney, as instructed,” Mecklenburg’s motion stated. “She did not try to hide anything she said or did in the October 9 grand jury session. … Indeed, at every turn Ms. Mecklenburg kept the Front Office informed of all developments in the case and followed its instructions.”
Perry also raised the argument Thursday that the Department of Justice waived any privilege claims by responding to Mecklenburg’s claim in her resignation letter that Boutros “personally directed” the seeking of a felony charge over her objection that the case was better suited to misdemeanor charges.
The Department of Justice said in a statement to the media last week that Mecklenburg’s claim was “false,” and that she had recommended “in writing to the supervisory chain of the U.S. Attorney’s Office” that the felony conspiracy was “the strongest charge.”
Near the end of the hearing, Whalen noted there “has been tremendous response” from the U.S. attorney’s office as a result of the admitted missteps in the Broadview case, with “massive changes” put in place at the grand jury level “to make sure certain that what took place in this case will not happen again.”
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“I’m telling you, your honor, your message has been received loud and clear,” Whalen said.
But Perry, a former federal prosecutor in the office, was not moved.
“If there were office-wide problems, the very least that should be done is to fix them,” she said. “The assurance now that things will be done how I thought they always were done is not very compelling.”