CHICAGO — The federal jury trial for the remaining “Broadview Six” protesters may have been canceled, but the fallout from Thursday’s bombshell revelations of alleged prosecutorial misconduct in the case continued Friday, with the former lead prosecutor’s firing from her new job and defense attorneys making moves toward sanctions.
The government, which had already dropped the lone felony charge last month after also dropping charges against two of the defendants in March, had been prepared to take the group to a rare federal misdemeanor trial set to begin next week.
But the trial was abruptly canceled — and remaining charges dropped — Thursday in a dramatic series of hearings in front of U.S. District Judge April Perry, who all but accused the former lead assistant U.S. attorney on the case of prosecutorial misconduct.
Read more: ‘Broadview 6’ trial canceled as prosecutors acknowledge misconduct before grand jury | Remaining ‘Broadview Six’ protesters set for rare federal misdemeanor trial next week
That prosecutor, Sheri Mecklenburg, withdrew from the case earlier this year after accepting an assignment to represent the Department of Justice as counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which Illinois’ senior U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin serves as the ranking Democrat.
But Durbin’s office on Friday announced Mecklenburg had been fired, saying the retiring senator “agrees with Judge Perry’s concerns about this deeply flawed prosecution.”
“Our office had no knowledge of this alleged misconduct until yesterday’s reporting,” a Durbin spokesperson said in a statement. “While the Senate Judiciary Committee doesn’t directly employ Sheri Mecklenberg, because of the gravity of the charges in this case, her detail from the Department of Justice has been terminated.”
Perry called lawyers to a closed-door hearing Thursday morning, during which she rebuked them for both the prosecutors’ dealings with the grand jury presented with the case in the fall, and what she suggested were deliberate attempts from prosecutors to mislead her about what went on in the grand jury room.
Earlier this week, the judge agreed to read the full, unredacted transcripts of the three grand jury sessions that led to the defendants’ October indictment. The group of six included candidates and local elected officials active in Democratic politics, including congressional candidate Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, who placed second in a crowded primary race for Illinois’ 9th congressional district in March.
Rare conspiracy charge dropped
The original indictment charged the group with an overarching count of felony conspiracy — an extremely rare charge against protesters, though its use by prosecutors is on the rise — as well as misdemeanor charges of simple assault of a federal officer, which does not require physical contact. The case arises from a Sept. 26, 2025, protest outside a federal immigration facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview in the early weeks of “Operation Midway Blitz.”
Defense attorneys had been seeking the transcripts since December and had grown increasingly vocal about their suspicions of what might be found in the transcripts.
Read more: Conspiracy charge dismissed for ‘Broadview 6’ as other ICE protesters sue over DNA collection | ‘Broadview 6’ defense accuses feds of keeping grand jury transcripts secret, reneging on dropping conspiracy charge | Feds say they’ll drop conspiracy charge against remaining ‘Broadview Six’ protesters
Perry cited Mecklenburg’s apparent attempts to sway grand jurors toward indictment by "putting her personal credibility and trustworthiness on the line in support of the charges,” improperly communicating with grand jurors outside of the grand jury room, and asking grand jurors “who disagreed with the government’s case ... to not partake in the second hearing,” according to a record of the sealed hearing released to the public late Thursday.
U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros took the extraordinary step Thursday of showing up to court himself, telling Perry in a second open hearing that he took responsibility for the alleged prosecutorial misconduct. Boutros, the Trump administration's highest-ranking official in Chicago, claimed that he knew about — and took steps to correct — the grand juror dismissals in the fall.
But he said he was only informed of the vouching and improper communications with grand jurors late last month, which prompted his late April decision to drop the felony conspiracy charge against the four remaining defendants.
Boutros also announced in court Thursday that the feds would be dropping the remaining misdemeanor charges, though minutes later he continued to defend them.
Read more: ‘Broadview Six’ plead not guilty to charges of ‘impeding’ agents outside ICE facility | Democratic candidates, officeholders indicted for ‘impeding’ agent outside ICE facility
Also on Friday, defense attorneys filed an emergency motion demanding the U.S. Attorney’s Office preserve all emails and text messages about the case. The motion follows attorneys’ promise on Thursday that they would be seeking sanctions to recover the defense costs for their clients, in addition to nodding to the possibility of disciplinary sanctions against prosecutors, which Perry mentioned in the closed-door hearing.
Chris Parente, a lawyer for Oak Park village trustee Brian Straw, one of the defendants, also said defendants planned to make claims under the Trump administration’s newly announced $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for those who believe they were “victims of lawfare” and political persecution by the U.S. Department of Justice.
“If you want an example of weaponization, you have prosecutors going into the grand jury targeting political candidates and political figures improperly,” Parente said.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
