‘Broadview Six’ judge wants to put prosecutors under oath, keeps contempt charges on the table

When federal prosecutors in Chicago assured a judge last spring they’d had no contact with the White House or top Justice Department officials about their pursuit of six Operation Midway Blitz protesters, U.S. District Judge April Perry took them at their word.

Those days are clearly over.

Rather, in a remarkable turn-the-tables moment that underscores the damage done to the feds’ credibility here, Perry concluded Thursday that further “under oath” fact-finding is needed in the tainted case of the “Broadview Six” — leaving open the possibility that she’ll name a special prosecutor to investigate U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros and others.

She did so at the end of an hourlong hearing in which she asked an attorney for Boutros’ office, point-blank, whether any of the prosecutors who worked on the politically charged case would invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

He said he didn’t know.

Eventually, Perry told the lawyers, “my sole focus, at this point, is on lack of candor, concealment of material facts, or other misconduct that occurred before me.”

She told Boutros’ team she’d be compiling a list of issues for which she wanted more evidence. Their response could come in the form of live testimony or in writing, she said. Regardless, the judge added, it “has to be under oath, under penalties of perjury.”

Still, she assured them, “I’m not reaching any conclusions today about what occurred.”

The judge also concluded that the six former defendants who once faced a felony have no legal stake in what happens next. So she said she’d enlisted William Baude of the University of Chicago Law School to write a brief opposing Boutros’ office, in order to maintain the court’s adversarial process.

Baude did not respond to messages seeking comment. But Christopher Parente, attorney for former defendant Brian Straw, told reporters after court that Perry is going to “find out the truth about what happened.”

“They got caught,” Parente said of the feds. “And just like their job is to hold people accountable, day in and day out, now it’s the court’s turn to hold the U.S. attorney’s office accountable for what they did to our clients.”

Perry did not outline her questions for the feds in court, and no further details had appeared on the court docket Thursday evening.

The “Broadview Six” case revolved around a protest outside an immigration holding facility in west suburban Broadview in September 2025. Prosecutors alleged that a crowd pushed and damaged a federal agent’s SUV. But from that crowd, only the six were charged with a conspiracy to impede the agent.

Most of them were involved in local Democratic politics. Straw is an Oak Park village trustee.

Also charged were then-congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, then-Cook County Board candidate Catherine “Cat” Sharp, 45th Ward Democratic committeeperson Michael Rabbitt, musician Joselyn Walsh and Abughazaleh campaign worker Andre Martin.

Many of them came to court to listen to Thursday’s arguments, which were held in a packed courtroom on the 17th floor of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse.

The case collapsed after Perry discovered that Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg allegedly spoke to grand jurors outside the grand jury room and put her personal credibility on the line to support charges. The judge also indicated Mecklenburg had excused grand jurors who disagreed with the feds’ case, a claim Mecklenburg denies.

Mecklenburg retired from the Justice Department last week in order to defend herself.

Perry said she found “most problematic” the fact that the apparent misconduct was redacted out of transcripts initially given to her by Boutros’ office. The redactions were made after Mecklenburg withdrew from the case.

The prosecutors who remained – and nearly took it to trial – were William Hogan, Matthew Skiba and Andres Almendarez. During Thursday’s hearing, Boutros’ office was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Maxwell Lisy and Nathaniel Whalen.

It wasn’t long ago that Chicago’s U.S. attorney’s office was considered one of the top tier in the nation. Perry once served in the office and helped prosecute Jon Burge, the late Chicago police commander tied to torture claims who was ultimately convicted of perjury.

President Joe Biden nominated Perry in 2023 to serve as Chicago’s top federal prosecutor. But her confirmation was blocked by then-Sen. JD Vance, who is now vice president.

Boutros was initially named U.S. attorney on a temporary basis by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi in April 2025. Chicago’s federal judges then chose Boutros to continue in the role on a more permanent basis in July 2025.

But Boutros’ office has been in crisis ever since Perry discovered apparent wrongdoing by Boutros’ staff in one of the most prominent cases to result from Midway Blitz, the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign.

One year ago this week, Boutros’ office began to level various Blitz-related charges against defendants, only to see them mostly collapse without convictions.

Now, multiple judges have wondered aloud whether they could trust his office in the wake of the “Broadview Six” revelations. And Perry’s refusal to shoot down the idea of a special prosecutor means the specter of a criminal prosecution still hangs over his head and others.

While the feds might eventually appeal any action taken by Perry, none of the moves she made Thursday seemed likely to trigger a challenge.

Perry’s inquiry threatens to reach into the upper echelon of the Justice Department, though. She seemed particularly frustrated during Thursday’s hearing when she tried to pin a government lawyer down on a question seemingly answered by the feds earlier this year.

Did Trump administration officials in Washington interfere in the case?

Federal prosecutors wrote in a March court filing that there were “no communications of any nature from, to, or with anyone outside” Boutros’ office “regarding any investigatory or charging decisions.” The only exception, they wrote, were local FBI investigators.

“To be crystal clear, this specifically includes anyone in the White House and all components and offices of Main Justice,” Hogan, Skiba and Almendarez wrote, referring to Justice Department headquarters.

During a follow-up hearing in April, Perry even said, “the prosecutors know how to do their jobs. They know that their law licenses in this case are on the line if they do them inappropriately.”

But Thursday, Whalen acknowledged those communications might exist after all. He said they would have occurred after the decision was made to file charges. Perry tried to pin down when that decision was made, though, given that it took multiple tries for prosecutors to convince grand jurors to indict.

At one point, Perry’s eyes went wide during Thursday’s hearing as Whalen tried to square his argument with the March court filing.

The judge said she’d been told “there’s nothing. No way, no how. And now, your argument has changed pretty significantly, and is ‘well, if there was something, it would be privileged.’”

“I don’t believe I said ‘there’s no way, no how communications,’” Whalen replied.

“You didn’t,” Perry shot back, emphasizing that the original claim came from prosecutors who nearly took the case to trial.

The judge spent much of the hearing exploring her various options. For example, she asked Whalen who would oversee a special prosecutor. He told her that person would report to the attorney general, because it’s up to the executive branch “to enforce the criminal laws.”

When Whalen brought up the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, Perry noted that it “doesn’t investigate criminal offenses.”

“I think we’ve got to take OPR out of the equation when we’re talking about a special prosecutor,” she said.

The pair also went back-and-forth on the legal standard used by the Justice Department for opening a criminal investigation, with Perry correcting Whalen along the way.

Eventually, Perry simply asked him, “why should the judge’s standard be higher than the Department of Justice’s?”