Notes from the Field – June 21, 2026
The “Broadview Six” case did not fall apart because the prosecutors were bad lawyers. It fell apart because a federal judge read the grand jury transcripts and saw what was in them — and then noticed that the version submitted to her by the prosecutors had pages missing.
The facts are not in dispute. On September 26, 2025, six people — a former congressional candidate, an Oak Park village trustee, a former Cook County Board candidate, a Democratic committeeperson, a musician, and a campaign worker — were among a crowd of protesters at a federal immigration facility in Broadview, Illinois. The crowd surrounded a federal agent’s SUV. Federal prosecutors selected these six from that crowd of hundreds and charged them with felony conspiracy carrying seven years.
What happened inside the grand jury was not visible until May 2026, when Judge April Perry ordered the unredacted transcripts and read them. The lead prosecutor had told the panel she had a “very interesting case” and urged the jurors to trust her — that she would never ask them to charge someone without probable cause. When the first group of jurors was skeptical — one called the case a “crock of sh–” — those jurors were excused. Prosecutors presented the case again to a reconstituted panel. When a juror asked whether prosecutors had “unlimited tries” to get an indictment, a second prosecutor replied: “I think the saying is the second time is the charm.”
Perry, a former federal prosecutor herself, told the courtroom she had read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts and had never seen what she found in these. The documented misconduct broke into nine categories: improper vouching, unauthorized contact with jurors outside proceedings, dismissing skeptical jurors, improperly testifying, failure to correctly instruct on the law, expressing personal opinions about guilt — and, in a separate detail, the U.S. Attorney himself appearing before the grand jury on the day of the indictment to ask jurors to identify themselves if they could not be impartial about immigration cases.
U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros appeared in court personally on May 21 and dropped all charges with prejudice. He apologized. He also continued to describe the defendants’ conduct as “unacceptable in a civilized society.” Perry told him he was “significantly undercutting” his own apology.
The controlled unraveling that followed is now documented across multiple courtrooms. A second case collapsed in June: a COVID-19 testing fraud prosecution brought by the same prosecutor before the same grand jury. A second federal judge — U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman — dismissed those charges and noted that Boutros was absent from her courtroom as he had not been from Perry’s. “Pandora’s Box has been opened,” Coleman said. “We have cases throughout this building that are all in turmoil.” More than 110 former federal prosecutors from the Northern District published an open letter describing a “failure of leadership” and a troubling exodus of staff from the office. Two U.S. senators called for Boutros’ resignation. House Judiciary’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin, called for federal and state bar investigations. Defense attorneys filed for a special prosecutor with authority to bring criminal contempt charges, arguing the misconduct runs not to a single rogue assistant U.S. attorney but to “the highest levels of the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office and likely to the Department of Justice in Washington D.C.”
The defendants are seeking discovery of communications between Boutros’ office and the White House. The government has indicated it will not contest their Hyde Amendment claim for legal fees — a posture that carries its own meaning. The Hyde Amendment allows fee awards only where the government’s position was vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith. By declining to contest it, the government has implicitly acknowledged the standard is met.
The Broadview Six case sits inside a larger record. The Chicago Sun-Times has tracked every prosecution arising from Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge in Chicago. Of more than 30 cases filed: two produced guilty pleas, five ended in deferred prosecution agreements, two remain pending. Twenty-four others failed — twenty dismissed, at least three refused by grand juries that would not indict, one acquittal. In the most severe case, a federal agent shot a woman five times; the administration publicly called her a domestic terrorist and charged her with assault, then dismissed the case after body camera footage contradicted the government’s account.
The mechanism has a history. Grand juries were designed as a constitutional check on the executive — a citizen body standing between the government’s desire to prosecute and the machinery of a criminal trial. The formulation that a competent prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich has circulated in federal courthouses for decades, because the pattern it describes is not new. The proceedings are secret. Defense counsel is absent. The prosecutor controls what the jury hears, how the law is explained, and — as these transcripts now show — which jurors are permitted to stay in the room.
The six people selected from a crowd of hundreds were all connected to local Democratic politics. When the first citizen panel was skeptical, skeptical citizens were removed.
One detail remains current as of this writing. The deputy attorney general who announced the original Broadview Six indictment — Todd Blanche — is now the Trump administration’s nominee to be Attorney General of the United States.
The sequence is stated plainly. The transcripts are public. A second case has collapsed. A judge has said Pandora’s Box is open. The U.S. Attorney has not appeared in that judge’s court. The man who announced the prosecution is nominated to lead the Department of Justice.
The silence won’t feel like silence. It will just feel like the way things are.
Essay 3 — The People in the Room
Broken Frames — Block 9: The Darkened Room (not yet published — thebrokenframes.substack.com/s/broken-frames)
Sources:
Chicago Sun-Times, “Broadview Six Charges Dropped as Chicago’s Top Federal Prosecutor Admits Case Was Tainted by Misconduct,” May 21, 2026.
Capitol News Illinois / Hannah Meisel, “Transcripts Show Grand Jurors Dismissed for Disagreeing with Government’s Case,” June 9, 2026.
CBS Chicago, “Newly Released Grand Jury Transcript Shows Prosecutors Vouched for Case, Dismissed Skeptical Jurors,” June 9, 2026.
WTTW Chicago Tonight, “‘Pandora’s Box Has Been Opened’: Judge Blasts U.S. Attorney Boutros as Another Case Falls Apart,” June 12, 2026.
Chicago Sun-Times, “‘Is Mr. Boutros Here?’ Judge Drops Fraud Charges, Calls Out U.S. Attorney,” June 12, 2026.
WTTW Chicago Tonight, “Former Federal Prosecutors Talk Andrew Boutros, Collapse of ‘Broadview Six’ Case,” June 11, 2026.
Capitol News Illinois / Hannah Meisel, “‘No One Can Credibly Investigate Themselves’: Broadview Six Protesters Request Special Prosecutor,” June 17, 2026.
Chicago Sun-Times, “‘Broadview Six’ Fallout Expands to Washington, as Raskin Calls for Probe,” June 17, 2026.
CBS Chicago, “Cleared ‘Broadview Six’ Defendant Calls Prosecutors’ Grand Jury Actions ‘Shocking and Horrifying,’” June 18, 2026.
David French / New York Times Opinion, “A Malicious Chapter in the History of American Justice,” June 21, 2026.
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