As the ABC7 I-Team reported last week, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office dismissed all charges against the "Broadview Six" or six people, including progressive politicians, who were protesting outside of the Broadview ICE processing facility during "Operation Midway Blitz" last fall and accused of disrupting immigration enforcement.
The charges were dismissed after it came to light that prosecutors in the case had redacted and removed pages from grand jury transcripts and failed to disclose interactions with grand jurors that defense attorneys say amounted to an intentional "coverup" of prosecutorial misconduct.
U.S. District Judge April Perry said last week the actions from prosecutors in the case could lead to sanctions for misconduct and ethical violations, as she had, "never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts."
On Tuesday, during a hearing in the case, defense attorney Christopher Parente told Judge Perry, "We believe the U.S. Attorney had personal contact with this grand jury," asking prosecutors to disclose any interaction U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros had with grand jurors.
"There's nothing inherently improper about a U.S. Attorney appearing before a grand jury, presenting evidence, questioning witnesses, or welcoming grand jurors to their role," said former federal prosecutor and ABC7 Chief Legal Analyst Gil Soffer. "It is improper, as the U.S. Attorney acknowledged, to vouch for the case."
"Vouching" is when a prosecutor inappropriately guarantees information before a grand jury, or vouches for the office's credibility, in order to secure an indictment, according to legal experts.
In the Broadview Six case, Judge Perry said after reviewing the grand jury transcripts, she identified instances of improper prosecutorial vouching, communications with grand jurors outside of the grand jury room and excusing grand jurors who disagreed with the government's case from the deliberations process.
"Most problematic," Perry said in court last week, "all of this was redacted out of the versions of the transcripts I got."
Soffer telling the I-Team nothing about this case is ordinary, and any future disclosures of what was said before the grand jury, including the possibility of audio recordings of the testimony, would be out of the norm.
"It's already unusual," Soffer said. "Unusually, we're going to see the disclosure of what happened inside the grand jury room, precisely so that we can know the answers to these questions."
In response to questions about whether the U.S. Attorney appeared before the "Broadview Six" grand jury, the U.S. Attorney's Office told the I-Team, in part, "Any appearance he has made in the grand juries has been in his capacity as the Chief Legal Advisor to the federal grand juries of this district, including to welcome them when they were impaneled or to advise generally on the role, function, and importance of the grand jury in our constitutional system of laws."
The office did not respond to questions over whether U.S. Attorney Boutros appeared before the Broadview Six grand jury in his capacity as the Chief Legal Advisor.
After the case was dropped last week, in an email to all U.S. Attorney's Office staff for the Northern District of Illinois obtained by the I-Team, Boutros was adamant nothing nefarious occurred.
"This case was beset by a number of challenges," Boutros wrote. "These prosecutors fought for the rule of law and fought for the safety and security of our federal officials and employees- and we thank them for that."
Attorneys for the Broadview Six plan to file additional motions on Wednesday in an effort to make the grand jury transcripts in question public.
In court on Tuesday, prosecutors for the U.S. Attorney's Office told Judge Perry it is bound by federal law to retain all communications about the grand jury in this case.
Defense attorneys will likely argue for possible sanctions against prosecutors next month.
Soffer said the public's trust in the integrity of the grand jury process, and what prosecutors say behind closed doors to secure criminal indictments, is crucial.
"There are a few things more consequential in our system of laws than the grand jury criminal process, it's the process by which people are indicted, and it happens in secret," Soffer said. "The allegations that have been made call into question the integrity of the criminal process, and that affects every American."