The criminal case is the grand jury indictment of the "Broadview Six": Six people, including progressive politicians, who were protesting outside of the Broadview ICE processing facility last fall and accused of disrupting immigration enforcement.
As the ABC7 I-Team reported Thursday, days before the criminal trial of the remaining "Broadview Six" members was supposed to start, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros dismissed all charges after U.S. District Judge April Perry criticized actions by prosecutors.
The I-Team obtained a copy of unsealed court testimony that was closed to the public, where Judge Perry raised the possibility of "prosecutorial misconduct" in the case.
See the full transcript of the closed-door hearing below.
U.S. Senator Dick Durbin announced on Friday he is cutting ties with Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg, who was working as counsel detailed to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee where Durbin is the ranking member, and was one of the prosecutors involved with the Broadview Six case.
"Senator Durbin agrees with Judge Perry's concerns about this deeply flawed prosecution," a spokesperson for Durbin's office said. "While the Senate Judiciary Committee doesn't directly employ Sheri Mecklenburg, because of the gravity of the charges in this case, her detail from the Department of Justice has been terminated."
As the ABC 7 I-Team previously reported, defense attorneys called redactions and missing pages in grand jury transcripts from the case an intentional "coverup" of prosecutorial misconduct by the US Attorney's office.
In the unsealed court transcript, Mecklenburg was referenced as "vouching" for evidence before the grand jury in the case, or making improper claims about how strong the evidence in the case was.
According to the transcript, another prosecutor on the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Skiba, told Judge Perry he had only worked for the USAO office for two months, and the Broadview Six grand jury was the second in his career.
In closed court, Skiba told Perry, "Ms. Mecklenburg is not here to defend herself. I am not trying to deflect blame, but I was with a 20-years-plus senior veteran."
"I remember what you referred to as the vouching incident. I remember thinking at the time that I would never make that statement as a matter of personal style," Skiba continued. "What I did not know then, and what only became apparent as we were discussing dismissing these charges, is that's beyond personal style, and that is, at a minimum, arguably misconduct."
Judge Perry did not mince words with the prosecutors.
"Mistakes happen. They happen to all of us. But as I tell my children, you own it. You admit to it. You apologize for it, and you move on. What you do not do is hide it," referencing redactions and missing pages from the grand jury transcripts that were originally turned over to the court.
"I do believe deeply... that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing. That trust has been broken," Perry said. "I think there is also a potential here... on sanctions for prosecutorial misconduct and for potential ethical violations, including lack of candor to the Court."
Reached by phone, Mecklenburg declined to comment on the allegations. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's office confirmed Mecklenburg's employment by the Department of Justice but also did not comment.
It is unknown when sanction hearings against Illinois Northern District prosecutors may occur but ABC 7 Chief Legal Analyst Gil Soffer told the I-Team there are many ways they could be imposed.
"All the charges have been dismissed. That's a pretty serious sanction right there," Soffer said. "Beyond that, if there is misconduct, there's often proceedings that happen within the Department of Justice by an office of ethics that investigates them and can take disciplinary action against prosecutors, if it's warranted."
But sanctions can also come from state bar associations, even the federal court itself, Soffer explained.
"There could even be sanctions imposed by the court that was presiding over the proceedings in question," Soffer said. "So, there are multiple points at which, or from which, discipline can be handed out."
Defense attorneys for Brain Straw, one of the original Broadview Six defendants, called for Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to open an investigation into actions by the Northern District US Attorney's office saying it has lost the public trust.
They filed an emergency motion on Friday asking for the preservation of all communications including emails and text messages about the case.
In a response to the motion, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros said the motion should be denied because charges against Straw were dismissed and the order is also unnecessary because the government maintains its records as it is required to do under the Federal Records Act.
It is unknown when sanction hearings against Northern District prosecutors may occur.
Full transcript of hearing, with closed-door session starting on page 18: