Julian Sanchez
‪@normative.bsky.social‬

Kinda defeats the point of having a grand jury if you can just boot everyone who didn’t want to indict, keep everyone who did, and keep trying until you get the result you want.

‪Beware the Ides of Ham‬
‪@literalham.bsky.social‬
· 3h

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

Parente, who was a federal prosecutor for 15 years, said he had never heard of anything as bad as the conduct in the Broadview Six grand jury sessions. He said that while he has not yet been able to review the unredacted transcripts, Judge April Perry gave a summary in court of her impressions. She said she had reviewed thousands of pages of grand jury transcripts in her career and had never seen anything worse than what she saw in these pages.

Parente said during the grand jury sessions, prosecutors used vouching, which he called a "101 no-no for any prosecutor," kicked out grand jury members who disagreed with them, did not disclose that a No True Bill – which indicates no indictment – had been returned to either the defense or the public. Parente also said that after receiving the No True Bill from one grand jury, they re-presented their case after excluding grand jurors who disagreed with them. The grand jury then returned a True Bill to indict the "Broadview Six."
ALT
5:12 PM · May 21, 2026

Beware the Ides of Ham
‪@literalham.bsky.social‬

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

Parente, who was a federal prosecutor for 15 years, said he had never heard of anything as bad as the conduct in the Broadview Six grand jury sessions. He said that while he has not yet been able to review the unredacted transcripts, Judge April Perry gave a summary in court of her impressions. She said she had reviewed thousands of pages of grand jury transcripts in her career and had never seen anything worse than what she saw in these pages.

Parente said during the grand jury sessions, prosecutors used vouching, which he called a "101 no-no for any prosecutor," kicked out grand jury members who disagreed with them, did not disclose that a No True Bill – which indicates no indictment – had been returned to either the defense or the public. Parente also said that after receiving the No True Bill from one grand jury, they re-presented their case after excluding grand jurors who disagreed with them. The grand jury then returned a True Bill to indict the "Broadview Six."
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‪CBS News Chicago‬
‪@cbschicago.bsky.social‬
· 4h

All remaining charges against the "Broadview Six" defendants have been dismissed by U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros Thursday afternoon.

All charges dismissed against "Broadview Six," defense says grand jury transcript revealed "gross misconduct"
www.cbsnews.com
4:31 PM · May 21, 2026

CBS News Chicago
‪@cbschicago.bsky.social‬

All remaining charges against the "Broadview Six" defendants have been dismissed by U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros Thursday afternoon.

All charges dismissed against "Broadview Six," defense says grand jury transcript revealed "gross misconduct"
www.cbsnews.com
4:04 PM · May 21, 2026

‘Broadview 6’ judge orders feds to closed-door hearing over grand jury transcripts, just days before trial

It’s unclear what prompted Wednesday’s order from U.S. District Judge April Perry, but it seems like bad news for prosecutors. The feds are set to take four protesters to trial Tuesday; all are accused of forcibly impeding a federal agent outside of an immigration processing facility.

By Jon Seidel May 20, 2026, 2:05pm EDT

{snip}

Lead prosecutor in ‘Broadview Six’ immigration protest case leaving for DC ahead of high-profile trial

By Jason Meisner | jmeisner@chicagotribune.com | Chicago Tribune
PUBLISHED: February 23, 2026 at 2:53 PM CST | UPDATED: February 24, 2026 at 4:47 PM CST

The lead prosecutor in the politically charged “Broadview Six” case accusing a group of Democrats and other protesters of conspiring to impede immigration agents at the Broadview ICE facility is leaving the office for a temporary detail in Washington, D.C.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago, has been assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen. Dick Durbin, a committee spokesperson confirmed Monday. Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the committee, which vets presidential nominees for the federal judiciary and U.S. attorney posts, is retiring in January 2027.

Mecklenburg is not expected to return to Chicago until next year and will miss the Broadview Six trial, which is currently slated to begin May 26. She officially withdrew from the case without comment last week. She also has stepped down from her role in a sweeping fraud case against former executives at Loretto Hospital.

{snip}

Matthew Skiba is an Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) working in the Northern District of Illinois. He gained notable attention as one of the prosecutors in the federal "Broadview Six" case.
• "Broadview Six" Case: Skiba, alongside AUSA William Hogan, was involved in the high-profile prosecution of six individuals accused of surrounding an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) van in Broadview, Illinois.
• Case Dismissal: In May 2026, prosecutors moved to dismiss the charges with prejudice after U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer and the defense highlighted prosecutorial misconduct before the grand jury. Skiba noted in court transcripts that he was a junior prosecutor at the time and had been accompanied by a senior veteran who handled the grand jury proceedings.

For the latest case developments and more information, you can read the reporting on the Chicago Sun-Times or the Capitol News Illinois coverage of the trial cancellation.

‘Broadview 6’ trial canceled as prosecutors acknowledge misconduct before grand jury

May 21, 2026 — According to the record of Thursday's closed-door hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Skiba reluctantly pointed the finger at his former colleague Sheri Me...

{snip}

In the past several months, prosecutors have repeatedly failed to persuade grand juries that the cases they have brought warrant criminal charges. And if it were not unusual enough, they have also been admonished at least three times since last November by federal judges who have accused them of misconduct.

The latest setback came in Chicago, where a judge cited a remarkable list of grand jury errors in a case that was dismissed against four Democratic activists about to face trial for impeding the police during a protest last fall at a suburban immigration detention facility.....

The prosecutors also stacked the deck in their own favor by removing from the panel some grand jurors who had voted against them when considering an earlier version of the charges. Making matters even worse, they tried to hide these maneuvers by redacting the grand jury transcripts — that is, until Judge Perry ordered them to give her the full copies.

The government’s missteps were bad enough to necessitate tossing out the case against the critics of the president’s immigration plan just days before it was supposed to go to trial.....

There are almost no statistics that gauge how often prosecutors fail to secure indictments or are chastised by judges because of their grand jury presentations, if only because such events used to be rare. Legal experts say it is just as uncommon for jurists like Judge Perry to shine a spotlight on grand jury proceedings, which are held in secret, although that, too, has been happening more often.

Barbara L. McQuade, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said that in her 20 years in the Justice Department, she had never worked on a case — or even heard of one — in which a judge had examined grand jury transcripts because of concerns about misconduct.

“Courts almost never do that, mostly because they trust that the government is acting honestly,” Ms. McQuade said. “But if the department demonstrates that it isn’t worthy of that trust, then it invites judges to look under the hood.”....

Part of the problem, legal experts say, is that Mr. Trump has hired inexperienced loyalists to fill senior roles in the Justice Department even as hundreds of career prosecutors have departed — either by their own choice or because they were forced out for having worked on cases that ran afoul of the president.

Junior prosecutors typically attend a weeklong course on the ins and outs of working with grand juries, and often trail more seasoned colleagues before they take the lead in presenting cases. But leaders in politically appointed posts do not get the same kind or amount of training.....

But over the past year or so, there has been a flurry of no true bills in federal courts across the country. Most have occurred in cities like Los Angeles and Washington, where grand jurors have rejected several cases involving people accused of protesting the administration’s immigration crackdowns and surges in federal law enforcement.

Other high-profile failures have involved grand juries hearing cases against Mr. Trump’s political foes — among them, Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, and the six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video reminding military and intelligence personnel of their obligation to disobey illegal orders.

Jon Seidel
‪@jonseidel.bsky.social‬

JUST IN: Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros says he is implementing "sweeping reforms to internal grand jury practices" in the wake of the "Broadview Six" revelations:

United States Attorney Andrew S. Boutros Announces Sweeping Reforms to Internal Grand Jury Practices and Disclosures; Remediation Plan Includes Most Substantial and Significant Changes in Decades

CHICAGO — Andrew S. Boutros, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, today announced a series of sweeping internal reforms to the Office’s grand jury practices and disclosures that took effect yesterday. The remediation plan, which represents the most substantial and significant internal changes to the Office’s grand jury procedures in decades, will streamline the Office’s grand jury processes and disclosures. The new process moving forward will be more transparent, effective, and impactful while greatly reducing the likelihood of mistakes and errors.
The important reforms, which took effect yesterday for all grand jury presentations in the Northern District of Illinois, establish clear and unequivocal expectations and rules for federal prosecutors related to grand jury disclosures and the timing of those disclosures. Among the many changes in the remediation plan are increased and expanded education about grand jury presentations, including extensive, deep-dive training from national experts outside the Office. U.S. Attorney Boutros and the Department of Justice have also taken swift action related to internal personnel matters.
“One of the benefits of being the first Chicago U.S. Attorney to have previously been Chair of White Collar in private practice is that I have represented and advised as my own personal clients some of the largest public and other companies and their audit committees, boards, C-suite executives, and others in highly sensitive and bet-the-company government and internal
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investigations,” said U.S. Attorney Boutros. “Everybody who has handled high-stakes corporate cases knows that in addition to the importance of thorough, honest, and objective investigations, there must also be remediation, reforms, and process improvements to allow organizations to accept responsibility and make sure that the same mistakes don’t happen again. What I have formulated and thereafter implemented on Tuesday of this week are among the most sweeping reforms to address root-cause issues in the Northern District of Illinois’s federal prosecutorial practices and procedures, especially as they relate to the grand jury and grand jury disclosures. They also make the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office among, if not the leading district in the country on grand jury disclosures. These remediations should also be deeply curative and put to rest once and for all the divergent practices that have existed across the Office for decades, including from one Assistant U.S. Attorney to another as well as from one generation to the next. That’s because these are clear, bright line rules that everyone must abide by, which should streamline and simplify the decision-making and disclosure process, as opposed to bedevil it. It also should all but eliminate points of contention between federal prosecutor and defense counsel as it relates to these grand jury issues.”
After learning of certain conduct by the government in the grand jury during a recent case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office immediately moved to dismiss the indictment in that case and proactively initiated an immediate review of other grand jury presentations that could have been impacted in a similar fashion. The inquiry has included both a root cause analysis into the Office’s practices and procedures generally, as well as an exam of any cases by the AUSAs who went into the grand jury in that case that could have been impacted by similar conduct. The Office’s review is far along but remains ongoing. In addition,…
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The reforms announced today, many of which are being implemented for the first time anywhere in the country, will transform and modernize the Office’s procedures, while continuing to adhere to the longstanding tradition that a prosecutor serves as “one of the most beneficent forces in our society,” as then-Attorney General (and later Supreme Court Justice) Robert H. Jackson shared in his seminal 1940 address, “The Federal Prosecutor.” Attorney General Jackson remarked that the prosecutor’s “powers have been granted to our law-enforcement agencies because it seems necessary that such a power to prosecute be lodged somewhere. This authority has been granted by people who really wanted the right thing done—wanted crime eliminated—but also wanted the best in our American traditions preserved.”
In announcing his reforms to the Office, U.S. Attorney Boutros thanked the Office’s Assistant U.S. Attorneys for all that they do for the people of the Northern District of Illinois: “Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for being on the front lines keeping our communities safe, making sure our victims are heard, protecting the public fisc, and working to hold accountable those defendants who commit serious crimes, all while doing so in the very best traditions of the Office and the Department. After all, the motto of the Department is ‘Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur,’ meaning, ‘Who prosecutes on behalf of Justice.’”
# # # #
This statement is not intended to, does not, and may not be relied upon to create any rights, substantive or procedural, that are enforceable at law by any party, in any criminal, civil, or administrative matter. This statement does not purport to offer legal advice nor is it intended to substitute for the advice of legal counsel. It does not in any way limit the enforcement intentions or litigating positions of the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, or any other U.S. Attorney’s Office or compon…
ALT
12:08 PM · May 27, 2026