Episode 91

Broadview Six Scandal, Part 2: Covering the Collapse

Hosted by Matt Adams

“In my experience, it's unusual in Chicago to see the US Attorney step up to a judge. I've seen it happen a few times … but it doesn't happen very often. I think this was the first time I had seen Andrew Boutros step up before a judge. And he began to explain how none of his prosecutors meant to mislead the judge, right? That was one of our first hints.”

When a federal prosecution unravels in open court, it takes an experienced courthouse reporter to recognize what's happening and explain why it matters.

Host Matt Adams sits down with Jon Seidel, a veteran federal courts reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times who has covered Chicago's federal courthouse for more than a decade, including the trials of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and former Chicago Alderman Edward Burke.

This episode picks up where Part 1 left off, moving from inside the courtroom to the press gallery. Jon recounts the extraordinary day he watched U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros personally acknowledge vouching and other prosecutorial misconduct in the Broadview Six case before a federal judge, only to then continue defending the case even as he dismissed the charges with prejudice.

He describes the Sun-Times' legal fight to unseal the proceedings, the moment the full scope of grand jury misconduct came to light, and what the fallout has meant for the broader credibility of the U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago.

The conversation includes a candid discussion of journalism as an accountability mechanism, including why dedicated beat reporting matters, how reporters guard against becoming a vehicle for either side's narrative, and what comes next as Judge Perry weighs sanctions.

Revisit Part 1 of our series, when Matt speaks with former prosecutors Nancy DePodesta and Chris Parente, defense attorneys who represented two of the Broadway Six.

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the participants and should not be considered the views of Fox Rothschild LLP or its attorneys. This podcast is for informational purposes only, is not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship.

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the participants and should not be considered the views of Fox Rothschild LLP or its attorneys.

This podcast is for informational purposes only, is not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Welcome back to "The Presumption of Innocence," a podcast brought to you by the White Collar Criminal Defense & Government Investigations Practice at Fox Rothschild.

I'm your host, Matt Adams, and in our last episode, we spoke with Nancy Podesta and Chris Parente, two defense attorneys and former federal prosecutors on the Broadview Six defense team, discussing what it was like to litigate against the government as its case unraveled and prosecutorial misconduct of a scope and magnitude few have ever seen before was exposed.

Today, in this special episode, we're going to ask not just what happened in the Broadview Six case as a matter of law, but precisely how the public came to know what happened and what obligation the press bears when prosecutors themselves cross the line and move into the territory of misconduct.

Our guest today is Jon Seidel.

He has covered federal courts and legal affairs for the Chicago Sun-Times since 2015.

This follows earlier reporting roles at Sun-Times Media and the Post-Tribune.

He is author of Second City Sinners, and his beat has included the trials of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, ex-Chicago Alderman Edward Burke, R&B rap artist R. Kelly, former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, and prosecutions of former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Heather Mack, among other high-profile cases.

But more recently, his reporting has extended to the litigation tied to Operation Midway Blitz, the federal enforcement crackdown in Chicago by ICE that gave rise to the Broadway Six case.

Jon, it is such an honor to have you here at the program today.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks.

That's very kind.

I- I'm glad to be here.

Give our listeners just your perspective on what the Broadview Six case is.

For those of them that may not have joined us in episode one of this two-part special series on the matter, give me from your reporter's lens or reporter's notebook what went on and what this case is really all about

Sure.

So the Broadview Six case i- is really one of the most high-profile prosecutions to come out of Operation Midway Blitz, which like you said, was that aggressive deportation campaign that hit Chicago last fall.

It resulted in criminal charges for non-immigration crimes, largely assaults against federal agents against 30-some people.

And, six of those defendants were all charged in this Broadview Six case.

They were all charged with a conspiracy to impede a federal agent.

And the allegations were basically that during a protest outside an immigration holding facility in the suburbs in Chicago.

This would've been, I believe, in late September.

As an ICE agent was trying to drive his SUV toward the holding facility, a large group, a large crowd of people gathered around that SUV, banged against it, pushed against it, damaged it, even carved the word pig into the side of it, and, and slowed its approach to the facility.

From that larger crowd, only six people were charged.

And, and notably most of them had some kind of role in local Democratic politics here in Chicago.

The most high-profile of the defendants was Kat Abughazaleh, who was running for Congress at the time.

There's also Oak Park Village Trustee Brian Straw.

Cat Sharp, she was another defendant who was running for a seat on the Cook County Board.

So let's see.

There was also Andre Martin, who was a member of Kat Abughazaleh's campaign staff.

There was Jose-

Michael Rabbitt.

Michael Rabbitt, who was a precinct committeeperson in Chicago Democratic, and also Joselyn Walsh, who is, is a musician.

So, so those were the defendants and, and six of them were accused of a conspiracy to slow this agent's approach to the facility.

There were also misdemeanor charges.

An indictment was handed up in late October, was headed toward trial in late May of this year.

As it went along, the prosecutors began to narrow the con- the, the conspiracy charge.

And actually, they dropped two of the defendants from the case, so only four of those defendants were on their way to trial.

But because of that narrowing, defense attorneys began to ask questions about how the grand jury was instructed in this case.

And again, to continue to kind of lay out the context for all of this, this was at a time when we were beginning to see grand juries push back against prosecutors and reject some of the cases that were brought as a result of Midway Blitz.

So these defense attorneys wanted to know exactly how the grand jury was instructed on the law in this case.

So interestingly, the government agreed to hand over grand jury transcripts to Judge April Perry, who was presiding over this case.

She was just going to take a look at them herself.

But after she got copies of the transcripts, the next day there was an order asking the government to please bring unredacted copies of the transcripts to court.

And there it begins.

There it begins.

And so the, she set a hearing.

We come in for the hearing.

They announce that they're going to drop that conspiracy charge, and actually drop the indictment completely, and move forward on these separate misdemeanor charges through a separate charging document.

Now, what that accomplished was that took the grand jury indictment and questions about how grand jurors were instructed on the law off the table.

And Judge Perry agreed that that mooted the issue, meaning she had no reason to look at these transcripts anymore, so she just moved on.

But the defense continued to push.

They were very suspicious of why, all of a sudden, the government would drop this conspiracy charge.

And so they pushed and they pushed, to the point that Judge Perry actually entered an order scolding one of the defense attorneys, who you mentioned, Chris Parente, on the docket.

You know, suggesting he was just pushing a little bit too hard on this.

And it wasn't until the final pretrial conference, Chris Parente made one more argument, one more plea to the judge, "Will you please look at these transcripts?" And she asked the government if they objected.

There was no objection from prosecutors, so she agreed to look at them, but speculated that any redactions in those transcripts were likely due to IT issues.

So she was going to look at unredacted copies of these transcripts finally, with days to go before trial.

I think it might've been two days later that she entered an order summoning any prosecutor who had any role in the redaction of those transcripts, which theoretically could've included US Attorney Andrew Boutros himself, into her courtroom for a hearing.

And you know, I'm sure we, we can get into a little bit more of the drama, but just to cut to the chase-

Yeah

… Jon Seidel: what happened was you know-

That's a dramatic moment in and of itself.

Seldom-

It is, and we can talk all about that later

… Matt Adams: Seldomly happens.

Right.

But the bottom line, it turned out there was a whole series of apparent prosecutorial misconduct documented in those transcripts, which prompted US Attorney Andrew Boutros to come in himself, completely drop the charges.

And it transformed the Broadview Six case into really a prosecution of these six defendants, and now potentially into a prosecution of the US Attorney's office itself and, and what has been going on in the US Attorney's office.

Yeah, and, and on, on episode one of this special two-part series, we obviously spoke with Nancy DePodesta and Chris Parente, and, and they framed out the legal arguments and even previewed some of what is to come as this litigation unfolds.

But really, I'm most interested in talking to you about the atmosphere and how this whole thing played out from a journalist's perspective.

Because the journalists in our country are protected under the First Amendment for very good reason, because they are an important checking force on the due process that is supposed to be afforded to criminally accused, like the members of this so-called Broadview Six group of defendants.

Walk us through the case to the point with, I guess, with emphasis on that single moment when you realized this was not your routine courtroom coverage, that there was something perhaps that you had never seen unfolding, and this was something to really dig in your intellectual curiosity on so as to inform the public writ large of what was going on.

Was it that order where you saw sort of something that you'd never seen before?

Or what, what was it?

Well, I think that the moment that this case transformed for me was when I heard the US attorney Andrew Boutros acknowledge vouching and other wrongdoing before the grand jury on that very big dramatic day.

But just to set the scene and, and take it back, and then I'll, I'll, I'll get to that.

You know, so I've covered this courthouse for, for more than a decade, and the US Attorney's office in Chicago has just, like, a really strong reputation for its credibility.

It's really been one of the most powerful things about the office.

In the waning days of the first Trump administration, the Trump-appointed prosecutor then was pursuing the top Democrat in Illinois, who's now in prison.

That's former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

Nobody was questioning the motivations of that prosecution then.

In fact, Michael Madigan, you know, he lost his speakership just because everyone knew the US Attorney's office in Chicago was coming for him.

So fast-forward to 2025 and Midway Blitz begins, and the US Attorney's office begins bringing these charges, and we start to see them fall apart.

We see grand jurors begin to reject them.

We see prosecutors begin to just drop them completely, realizing they won't be able to prove their case.

And in January of this year, the, the one Operation Midway Blitz case that went to trial, it really began to fall apart based on a judge's rulings days before that trial.

They went forward with it anyway.

The trial, actual testimony, I think, maybe lasted roughly three hours.

It was a quick acquittal.

So that credibility was already crumbling in the midst of, as, as they pursued this Broadview Six case.

My point is that we're starting to see a change take hold with the US Attorney's office.

And you're right.

To your point about journalists and our role in this, I mean, I, I realized it was very important for me to stay on top of this.

Prosecutors are bringing charges, accusing people of crimes.

It was our job to stay on top of it and see if they could actually prove the case.

That order that you mentioned, when I saw Judge Perry order prosecutors into court in late May, again, days before trial, just like that earlier trial, it was jarring.

But the story I wrote that day was actually like, "Here we go again." I mean, we saw the case, it was a murder for hire aimed at Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol boss who led Operation Midway Blitz.

That was the trial in January where the jury acquitted the defendant.

We were starting to see that fall apart days before trial.

With the Broadview Six case, it began to look like just another example of the case beginning to fall apart.

But let's talk about that day when, you know, when that hearing took place and we discovered everything that went on.

I mean, first of all, Judge Perry said she was going to have that hearing under seal, and she was going to keep it sealed in anticipation of a possible trial.

She didn't want to taint the jury pool.

Obviously, we wanted to be there, and so we quickly engaged with lawyers, and the Chicago Sun-Times and other media organizations intervened and moved to have the hearing unsealed.

So the whole day actually began with an argument from our lawyers about why this hearing should take place out in the open.

And-

Remarkable

… Jon Seidel: and, yeah, and, you know, Judge Perry, she made clear, especially to the defense, that, like, nobody knows what we're about to talk about here.

And she said, I'm … She even said in that, that hearing, like, "I don't intend to keep this under seal forever.

In fact, it may just…" I think she may, might have even said, "It may even just be for a matter of hours that it's under seal."

But eventually she decided that that hearing would take place under seal.

So we were all instructed to leave the courtroom.

And here's something I hadn't seen before.

I've been asked to, to leave what was, you know, a courtroom upon a sealing before.

Sometimes, you know, we just go out into the hall and wait.

I, I've seen it where, you know, there, there's some windows in the, in the doors for the courtrooms in the Chicago's courthouse.

Yeah, I've seen them paper over those windows.

What they did this time was they actually roped off Judge Perry's courtroom and sent us down to the end of the hall, where myself and my colleagues in the press, we all just kind of had to wait until those ropes came down and we were allowed to come back into the courtroom.

And so we did.

We waited, and when we came back in, things moved very quickly.

I think Judge Perry said the trial date was off.

There was a briefing schedule that was set, but we still didn't know what the briefing schedule was.

And of course, everything that had happened in her courtroom was under seal.

So court was adjourned, but they were going to come back in about an hour or so.

And so everybody went for lunch, and everybody's, like, hanging out in the courthouse cafeteria and seeing, seeing the defendants, the defense attorneys, but nobody can talk about what happened.

And so we come back, and that's when I see the US Attorney come into the courtroom.

In my experience, it's unusual in Chicago to see the US Attorney step up to a judge.

I've seen it happen a few times.

I've seen a, I've seen a US Attorney actually work a trial, but it doesn't happen very often.

I think this was the first time I had seen Andrew Boutros step up before a judge.

And he began to explain how none of his prosecutors meant to mislead the judge, right?

That was one of our first hints.

And, you know, one thing that I do in the courtroom, I'm not just taking notes.

You know, one thing that people seem to find very valuable from me is that I, I do my best to push out live coverage, both through Twitter and through Blue Sky.

So I'm taking notes, I'm pushing this stuff out.

But I think it was when he mentioned vouching, which of course is when, you know, as your listeners know, is when a prosecutor puts their own credibility on the line to support criminal charges.

That's something they're not supposed to do.

When he said vouching-

Strictly prohibited.

Strictly prohibited in a grand jury.

Right.

So I'm pretty sure the first time I heard vouching was out of US Attorney Andrew Boutros' mouth.

Because remember, there's been this whole sealed hearing.

We don't know what happened in that sealed hearing or what was said.

We just know the US Attorney is suddenly, you know, apologizing to the judge.

He didn't know about the vouching.

He didn't know about ex parte communications.

This is all stuff we're hearing for the first time.

That is when I began to realize that something had gone south, like, seriously with this case, and that this was going to be different from any other case I had covered in the courthouse.

And then things continued on.

And the prosecutor, the US Attorney, actually went on to defend the case despite dropping the charge … He said he was going to dismiss the charges.

He confirmed for the judge that he was dismissing the charges with prejudice.

But in spite of doing so, he continued to defend the case, saying that if it had been some other kind of official, perhaps a judge, perhaps a congressperson, then who had been in that SUV, that there wouldn't have been any question about whether to bring charges.

And, you know, I think something along the lines of, "By the grace of God, nothing more serious happened, that nobody else got hurt." And, and I remember specifically him saying that the conduct on that day outside the holding facility has no place in civilized society.

And that prompted Judge Perry to tell him that he was seriously undermining any mea culpa that he was delivering by continuing to undermine the defendants.

And again, he had already dropped the charges against that.

He was no longer trying to prosecute them.

He was in damage control mode at this point.

Totally.

Totally.

But again, like rare to see a US Attorney step up in front of a judge, rare to see a judge rebuking the US attorney.

I mean, this, this was completely different from anything I'd ever seen.

And, you know, I'm, I'm pausing because I'm trying to make sure that I'm not mixing things together from what we later learned from the sealed hearing.

But the bottom line, I remember when I … when that hearing ended, I felt compelled to, and I did.

I, I put it out there on Twitter and Blue Sky, "In my 11 years covering this courthouse, I had never seen a hearing like that."

And I think that's definitely held up given all of the fallout that has continued ever since that case.

And and again, just to kind of close the loop, it wasn't till hours later that we got a transcript of what, what actually transpired in that sealed portion of the hearing, where Judge Perry laid out that there had been vouching before the grand jury, that there had been a prosecutor had spoken to grand jurors outside of the grand jury room, and that she had been … A prosecutor had excused grand jurors who didn't agree with the case.

Well, this is misconduct at the highest levels of our government.

This is what our free press was designed to expose and shine a light on because frankly, if this was a defense lawyer engaging in misconduct like this, that's what the prosecutors would do.

But when the government's doing it in a secret proceeding, it's nearly impossible to ferret out without some aggressive journalistic tactics.

Grand jury proceedings, as I've mentioned, are obviously secret by design.

How did that impact your ability to cover this case?

Because what's come out later is that there was actually three separate presentations to the grand jury, a first which was no bill.

That unto itself is an anomaly, as I spoke with about Nancy and Chris.

When that happens, that's usually game over.

We'll move on to something else.

It's a victory.

Goodbye.

But yet they went back to the well, dismissed the second, and came again for a third before they were able to secure these indictments.

All of that, by the way, taking place outside of your purview because you're not privy to that information.

How, as a journalist, are you connecting the dots, reading the tea leaves in order to do your job, the job of the free press, to shed light on this government misconduct?

You know, well, it's difficult.

But one of the things that we do is try and just be dogged in catching court hearings and pursuing transcripts.

Look, I had been poking around.

Well, one of the, the things about Judge Perry's decision to originally look at the redacted grand jury transcripts was it gave us a sense of when they were actually before the grand jury.

That gave us dates when they bef- were before the grand jury.

So before any of this came out, I was actually trying to explore what we could find out about what happened with those grand jurors.

You know, I believe there's a rule that says that the foreperson of the grand jury has to report a no bill to the magistrate judge who's on duty.

So I've been, you know, working to, to pull transcripts from those moments when they reported, just anything at all that I could find to offer any clues about what might have gone on with this grand jury.

But, but look, it's hard.

It is, it is secretive.

It's, it's treated as highly secretive in this courthouse.

It's very difficult to get at what is going on in these grand juries.

And you know, a lot of the times to, to pursue some of these things, like I mentioned before, we've got to bring lawyers into court.

That costs money, and it involves conversations with my editors about you know, the, a cost-benefit analysis.

So it makes it difficult.

But the best thing we've been able to do is just go to hearings, pull transcripts when we can, try and connect the dots like you said.

I mean, the reason we know about the other no bills that were brought during Midway Blitz was because there were magistrate judges who insisted that prosecutors explain in court and on the record why they were suddenly dropping charges that they had brought before.

That happened with a couple who was protesting at the same facility who happened to have guns.

They were carrying their guns legally, but they got a… There were a lot of headlines about those guns.

Charges were brought against them, but they were dropped after a grand jury no bill.

And there was another assault case where a magistrate judge, I had to ask a prosecutor repeatedly whether it was a no bill.

And, and I think the prosecutor was just trying to be cautious because it is treated as such you know, a secret process, the grand jury process.

So that's kind of what we've have, we've had to do.

But you're right, I, I agree that this is important for … Our role is important here.

The US Attorney, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the most powerful positions in the state of Illinois, maybe one of the top three or four.

Because they can bring charges and ruin somebody's life so completely.

And so it's extremely important to make sure that they are upholding the standards that they're expected to uphold.

And obviously, there's been a, a breach here.

And we've, you know, continued to stay on top of what actually went on.

You know, the misconduct before the grand jury in the Broadview Six case has largely been attributed to one prosecutor, but there are still questions about the redactions in those grand jury transcripts.

That, that prosecutor who you know, is, all this misconduct has been attributed to, she actually left the office for another assignment in roughly February.

So there are still questions about why any of this was redacted out of the transcripts that were given to Judge Perry in April and May.

Well, those transcripts are unredacted and in the public domain now.

And because of your dogged reporting and piecing together the tea leaves that you were reading throughout this secret process, we now know what was said to those jurors, how those jurors responded to the evidence, the vouching that was undertaken.

One of the single most provocative things that I gleaned from those transcripts is one juror, one grand juror literally calling the government's case "a crock of shit," and that unceremoniously led to their being excused from the grand jury as a, as a consequence of making that statement.

What do you view as, when you look at this entire timeline of events, the most damning revelation that comes out of that unsealed transcript?

Collectively, all of the transcripts.

Yeah.

So, so I'm, I'm, I'm pausing to, to think about it.

You had that moment, you had the acknowledgement that, that they were talking to grand jurors outside the grand jury room, which I should say that the, the prosecutor said that these… I believe these grand jurors came up and, and spoke to her, but, but still.

Well, you know, I, I, I think one thing that jumped out at, at me was just kind of like, you know, just right from the get-go, I mean, you said it.

The vouching is, is strictly prohibited.

It's right at the top of those transcripts.

The, the, she, the, the one prosecutor literally says the other will vouch for her.

It, it's right there at the top.

And, and when those transcripts came out, boy, I began hearing right away from people who were just shocked about that conduct.

So it, it appeared to be quite blatant.

So I think that may be the th- and, and then also the moment that you talked about, this juror pushing back, I mean, that was such an important moment, too, and, and kind of reflects where we were in Chicago at this time with grand jurors pushing back and just telling the government straight up "I heard this a week ago, and I thought it was a crock of shit then and I still do."

And for the prosecutor to then excuse that grand juror.

I think maybe that's, that's the one that gets the most attention because people … It, it's just so clear what is going on.

This is a grand jury who, grand juror who doesn't buy it, and they're being sent away.

So I think that those are the things that come to mind as far as that transcript goes.

But also, and we haven't really talked about this, but, but also quite significant is that we've seen other cases in Chicago's federal courthouse fall apart since because of this.

You know, this led to a review of other cases by the same prosecutor, and I think at this point if you include … There are the four Broadview Six defendants who were headed to trial who were cleared because of all this.

We've since seen, I believe, six other defendants in two other cases have their charges dropped because of apparent misconduct by the same prosecutor in those cases.

You know, that's damning.

It's also, incredibly significant that we're seeing people walk away from these cases that the government brought because of wrongdoing in the grand jury room.

Yeah.

How do you interpret the timeline that internal awareness of the misconduct reportedly was not disclosed to the court until just before trial?

Does your reporting suggest that there was a deliberate delay or a genuine failure to escalate these concerns internally?

I, I think you're getting at one of the, the most important points that, you know, I think we'll, we'll be watching, we'll be watching to see if it is explored in the coming weeks.

So when Andrew Boutros came in to talk to the judge on May 21, he acknowledged that he had known about some of what was in these transcripts three weeks earlier.

That's when they, they dropped the, the indictment, they dropped the conspiracy charge and decided to move forward with these misdemeanor charges.

So he knew then what was happening, but made the decision to move forward with the misdemeanors anyway.

Now, again, he defended that prosecution and, and defended the decision to prosecute them.

What would have happened if that trial had just moved forward and Judge Perry had never looked at those transcripts?

Would any of this been reported to a disciplinary commission, to the Office of Professional Responsibility?

Big question.

It may never have seen the light of day, that transcript

I, I mean, you know, it, it does make me wonder why they moved forward with this at all and didn't just drop the case.

Because you're right, I mean, there are so many paths here where, like, we might not have known about any of this.

But they pushed forward with the case, and the defense continued to push for the judge to read the transcript, and here we are.

But, but yeah, I think there are great questions about what would've been done about this with these other cases?

Would we have seen the fallout in these other cases before, or would those cases have moved forward?

And again, who redact… Now, there is another prosecutor in the case who took responsibility before Judge Perry for those redactions and did not point fingers anywhere else.

So if that person takes the fall for the redactions, that person takes the fall for the redactions.

But it was known that there was misconduct before the grand jury.

The case moved forward anyway.

Redacted transcripts were given to the judge.

Yeah, I, I… You know, we don't know yet.

I mean, US Attorney-

I, I, I'm going to call it intentional.

I mean, if I'm evaluating that as somebody who is consuming it on the objective merits of what it says on its face, I'm calling that intentional.

You're calling what intentional?

The redactions and the, and, and keeping it from the court as indicia of an intentional misleading of the tribunal.

Sure, sure.

So, you know, that may be the case.

Now, we haven't seen… We've seen fallout.

Sheri Mecklenburg is the prosecutor to which much of this misconduct has been attributed, the, the vouching, the talking to the grand jurors outside the grand jury room.

Last I heard, she is still employed with the Department of Justice, but we're not… You know, she was terminated from her, her role.

She, she went off to work for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

She's been terminated for her role there.

It's not like we're seeing her work cases around the courthouse.

But there were three other prosecutors on this case, including the one who took responsibility for the redactions.

They're continuing to work cases in the courthouse, so there's a great question about what's going to happen with them.

Will there be a finding that those redactions were intentional?

Will there be sanctions?

And what was known by people above them?

I mean, there, there have been questions from the start of this case about whether there was interest in this case beyond the Chicago US Attorney's office.

Todd Blanche, who is seeking the confirmation as attorney general, he had a quote in the original press release about this case.

That doesn't usually happen, but he was quoted in the original press release for this case.

So what did he know about the case?

What did others between him and US Attorney Andrew Boutros know about the case, and what was their interest?

This is all stuff that's going to be explored in theory, in the coming weeks, depending on the decisions by Judge Perry, who clearly was not happy with what happened.

But she has also allowed kind of the situation to cool over what I guess is now I'm realizing it's been two months since all of this came out, and we're unlikely to get any kind of ruling from her about sanctions or a, a special counsel probably for another month.

Well, I want to zoom out from the facts of this specific case for just a moment to sort of a broader theme for our audience.

And I, I didn't bury the lead in, in my opening that I want to talk about the institutional role of the press in scrutinizing prosecutors.

Defense lawyers come under scrutiny all the time by prosecutors, but there is seldom a equal checking force placed on prosecutors.

And I really want to invite you to reflect on journalism as an accountability mechanism, because seldom are prosecutors held to task for something that would land a defense lawyer.

This misconduct would land a defense lawyer in a disciplinary hearing, if not criminal charges for obstruction of justice.

And it's very possible that the people involved in this will go scot-free, and that to me is an appalling miscarriage of justice.

But I want to, I want to talk to you from a journalistic perspective on a number of different levels.

First being, how do you guard against being a vehicle for one side's narrative?

That is, whether it's the defense or the government feeding you facts that they may view as advantageous to their position when you're covering a case as politically charged as this, where there is so much public interest that your editors are sending you in there, sending lawyers into court to get you the right to cover it.

Yeah.

How do you keep yourself centered in journalistic integrity and not spilling into the type of impassioned arguments I'm presenting, admittedly, right now about my feelings towards this case?

You know, I, I'm just going to make a, a pitch here, and to the extent that there are editors and reporters listening, for, for beat reporting, you know?

One thing that I think served me very well throughout Midway Blitz and the coverage of the Broadview Six case is that I've been covering this courthouse for 11 years.

I've seen between Senate confirmed and actings and interims, five or six different US Attorneys come and go.

I have learned through time what it means when things are, are quiet and, and that you don't always know exactly what's going on in the building and, and when a case is going to explode and you know, like, my job is going to change.

But look, in court you, you know how things are supposed to go, you know what the rules are.

And it … I've seen, I've seen players switch sides.

I've seen prosecutors like Chris … I remember when Chris and Nancy were prosecutors.

I covered them as prosecutors, and now I've covered them as defense attorneys.

So-

No doubt, no doubt in my mind they were tough prosecutors.

Yeah.

No, absolutely they were.

And so, that time has kind of, kind of helped me go into the courtroom for all of these cases, for the prosecutions, for the National Guard litigation.

You know?

The, the, the president tried to deploy the National Guard into Chicago, and it was Judge Perry who blocked that, and her order that went to the Supreme Court.

She's the same judge handling the Broadview Six case.

Other litigation dealing with Midway Blitz.

I managed to get to the point where you try to get yourself to a place where you don't have to rely on one side or the other.

You don't have to play the access journalism game.

You know people, you've built up a level of respect regardless of, of what role they're playing.

And you know, you just try and do the right thing in your reporting.

And I, and I've found that if you try and do the right thing through your reporting, people will, will respect that.

And, you know, and when you try, when you try and be fair, they, they see that, and they will continue to work with you even if, you got to beat them up a little bit in, in in, in your stories once in a while.

You know, they, they understand what you're trying to, to do.

So I think that that is kind of what… When you ask about what has kept me centered, it's just, you know, I've, I've been through this.

I've covered lengthy trials.

I just know how this rolls.

And so when something happens in court, you know, I know that this is an incredibly significant moment.

I know this is not the way things are supposed to be operating.

I know this is unusual, and I don't have any hesitation to call that out.

Whereas, you know, I, I've also been a general assignment reporter, which means that you're just… You just go into work, and your editor says, "Hey, we need to send you to this hearing."

That reporter might not know the background of that case, might not know the players in the courtroom.

And so they go in there, and, you know, they're just doing their best, you know, to try and, and report the facts, but they don't have that background knowledge.

So this is why I'm saying beat reporting I think is crucial for newsrooms around the country to build up beat reporting in just, you know, important institutions, whether it be in the nation's capital or in our cities.

We have to have people in place who know what's going on, know the way things are supposed to work, and don't have to rely on the US Attorney's office or the defense bar to, to call, call it as we see it.

We can just report it.

You're there.

You're there, and it strikes me when I began my career practicing law at any mundane criminal arraignment on a Tuesday afternoon in federal magistrate judges courtrooms throughout the districts where I practiced, there would be a reporter there.

Yeah.

A couple of decades later, that's not the case.

Right.

Not the case at all.

Whether it's budget cuts or different interests other than staffing courthouses with reporters, the reality is that my original experience in these courtrooms is different today than it was when I first started my career.

Has covering this Broadview Six case changed how you think about your role or the role of court reporters, not stenographers, but beat reporters that are assigned to the courthouse in surfacing the types of misconduct and backstories about criminal charges that have, but for dogged journalism and I would dare say dogged lawyering would've been buried in sealed records and never saw the light of day, never been held to the public accountability that hopefully the prosecutors in this case will face?

I don't know if I'd say that it's changed my view.

I, I mean, to go back to the, the case of Michael Madigan, for, for example, the former Illinois House Speaker who he was convicted early in 2025 in Chicago.

I mean, I, I remember trying to come at that and, and related trials with the mindset of, of, you know, prosecutors brought all these allegations against him.

He was knocked out of office.

Now they have a case that they need to prove.

Even then it was about kind of holding them to their burden.

I, I think it's been a good reminder though and a good wake-up call that we do need to not be complacent and take our role seriously.

But, you know, for better or for worse, I feel like we continue to see examples of this in Chicago and elsewhere.

You mentioned the Jason Van Dyke trial.

Jason Van Dyke is the former Chicago police officer who was convicted of second-degree murder of the teenager, Laquan McDonald.

That trial occurred in 2018.

And, you know, I, lived through that scandal as a Chicago reporter, and that was another one of those wake-up calls where, I mean, I, I remember being told to, if there was a police-involved shooting, "Just call the, call the head of the police union.

He'll fill you in on what happened." We you know, and, and, and that was a, a… that was regular advice given to reporters, and we've since learned that, that, you know, you couldn't rely on that.

You know, so my point is there have been a, a series of lessons learned in Chicago and elsewhere that, that we need to stay vigilant about, you know, where we're getting our facts, and we need to hold powerful people to account.

And again the U.S. Attorney is an incredibly powerful position.

And so I think regardless of who's in that office, we do need to be vigilant about the kind of cases they're bringing and whether or not they're able to prove their case.

In, in 2023, there was a series of corruption trials, many of them related to that Madigan investigation.

And back then, not only were they getting indictments from the grand jurors, they would come into to court, they would prove their case to a group of citizens, the jurors, and throughout most of the year in this run of trials, the jurors were siding with them on every count.

Now, there have been legal questions that have come out of, of some of those cases, and so we're trying to stay on, on top of all of that.

But you know, things have changed significantly now, and I think it's, it's just as important as ever perhaps more important, that we stay on top of that and try and figure out what's going on.

You brought up the question about whether or not there's going to be accountability for this.

I think that myself and others intend to see this through and make sure the public knows one way or another how this shakes out.

Well, we're talking with Jon Seidel of the Chicago Sun-Times.

In our waning moments together today, Jon, do you think that the defense team's public statements, they were on, two of the members of this, the defense team here in this case, were on this very program and I, and I asked them about their public statements, and they unequivocally backed them up.

But they were provocative public statements including resignation calls and including allegations against US Attorney Boutros of actual personal contact with the grand jury.

They're very serious allegations.

How important is it to independently verify what defense lawyers are, are telling you?

Because a very substantial number of our audience are members of the defense bar or work in ancillary professions that represent private sector individuals and entities in these types of investigative matters.

When you're dealing with a journalist from that position of advocacy, how much of a grain of salt do you take with what you're being told by the defense side or the prosecution side?

You know, it really depends.

You've got to know who you're dealing with.

And look, I, I don't, it, I don't want to put anything out there.

I, I don't, I don't want to quote a defense attorney, a prosecutor making a provocative statement.

I don't want to do it just to get the quote out there, right?

Like, that's, that's not my style.

I don't, I don't want to, you know, put something out.

But you, you know, you reminded me of, … I remember when I, and I believe it was Chris Parente who said in court and perhaps I'm mistaken, but I think it was, he was the one who said that there was reason to believe that Andrew Boutros had had contact with that grand jury.

I mean, right, that's a provocative statement.

But it was a statement that was made on the record, in court, as an officer of the court, and it came from somebody who has got a pretty solid track record of being able to back up what he says.

And I mean, I didn't hesitate in reporting that.

But if an attorney or a prosecutor does not have that kind of track record, does not have that kind of credibility, I, I do sometimes hesitate.

And I … There's … It's, it's kind of like a constant equation in my head.

If the US Attorney has no credibility, but he's out there saying things, and he's the US Attorney, then things do get really difficult.

There are a lot of conversations about what to do.

And I'm not talking about Andrew Boutros right now, I'm talking about US attorney X, who just has no credibility, says things, then we've got to, you know, make some decisions in our newsroom about what we are and aren't going to report from that person.

Same thing for, for a defense attorney who's just … If a defense attorney's just out there throwing things out, and over and over again they turn out not to be true, then we're not going to, to report any of that.

So, you know, I … It's like I said, I think it depends on the source and their level of credibility, and whether they've been able to back things up in the past.

I, I should say real quick, because I talked about US Attorney Boutros talking to the grand jury.

What turned out to be the case was, was that on the final day that the grand jury met, before they handed up that indictment against the Broadview Six, US Attorney Boutros did speak to grand jurors that day before they began hearing cases.

And he talked to them about their role in the process.

You know, we learned later about the, the juror who had called the case "a crock of shit.".

And he, he mentioned that they were the conscience of the community, I believe.

But he also said, "If anybody is having trouble with any of the cases," he mentioned immigration.

I think he mentioned immigration a couple of times, but then he also mentioned some other topics.

Said, "Raise, raise your hand if you're having trouble." Apparently nobody did, and, and that was the end of it.

But he, he made that comment.

It, it wasn't while they were considering the Broadview case, it was, it was before that.

So I just wanted to give a little clarity to that.

Is there a version of this story that the advocates, the defense lawyers involved couldn't tell because of privilege, ongoing proceedings, orders of the court, that made your role even more important as a journalist because you knew that they were hamstrung in the way that they could speak publicly about matters that were going on inside the walls of that courthouse?

You know, there's no specific example that's coming to mind.

But certainly I was able to put this case in the broader perspective.

I mean, one thing that we did, it was very important for us at the Sun-Times to keep track of these Midway Blitz prosecutions and where they were going.

We have an online tracker.

You know, and I think we're at the point right now where it was 33 defendants.

Maybe roughly 24 of those defendants have been cleared.

Five more are on track to be cleared And there are maybe two guilty pleas and two pending.

Not sure if my math holds up right.

Those numbers are somewhere around there.

But in reporting on Broadview Six, I was able to put Broadview Six in the context of these problematic, crumbling Midway Blitz cases.

And I, I'm not sure if that was something that the, the defense attorneys could speak as easily about.

I mean, some of them could.

You know, Chris Parente had another high-profile Midway Blitz case.

He represents Marimar Martinez, who was shot by Border Patrol in Chicago and survived.

She was charged but then prosecutors dropped the charges against her.

So, they were able to speak about it to an extent, but I, I, it, I think maybe to your question, I was able to just put things into broader context.

Well, the scandal certainly remains active.

Boutros' office is conducting an internal review of more than 1,000 grand jury presentations dating back to 2007.

The question will become whether this is a real examination or this is just window dressing to cover for what is, what I would argue, the biggest prosecutorial misconduct in the United States in recent history.

Political pressure continues to mount on Boutros, including very prominent political leaders calling for his resignation.

Separately, in July of this year, a magistrate judge found that Boutros violated a secrecy order in an unrelated case, suggesting the credibility questions raised by this Broadview Six case may very well reverberate not only through this particular prosecution, but to a whole swath of the work of that office.

I want to ask you to take out your crystal ball and what do you think's happening?

What's going to come of this next?

What do you want our listeners to be watching for and following your journalism about for the Chicago Sun-Times in the coming weeks and months ahead, if they want to continue to follow this story?

You know, I've talked a little bit about the credibility of the US Attorney's office in Chicago, and I, and I think a lot of it going forward revolves around that, because you're right.

There have been, interestingly, other incidents that have come up since Broadview Six, not necessarily related to Broadview Six, but where judges are questioning the credibility of the US Attorney's office and the federal agencies that they work with, and whether or not they can trust the information that they're getting.

I think that's going to be key when it comes … We're all going to be … Look, we're all going to be watching to see what Judge Perry does in the coming weeks.

She's mentioned sanctions hearings.

She's mentioned other, I think she said investigatory bodies.

She's clearly had on her mind what to do about all of this.

The defense attorneys are asking for a special counsel from outside the Justice Department to probe the US Attorney's office and the people above them.

So we're going to be watching for that, but we're also going to be watching to see how the judiciary continues to react to the US Attorney's office.

It's … Look, I mean, I think there's a lot of concern about damage done.

I think the judges are very worried about this.

They're raising questions.

A lot of those judges worked in the US Attorney's office back in the day.

And so I think I'm going to be watching to see if If Boutros can right the ship, if he, if he remains with the office.

I mean, he's, he's signaled only that he intends to stay, and, you know, there d- there doesn't seem to be anybody outside of Todd Blanche and President Trump who can force him out.

So is he able to right the ship, get this office back on the track it needs to be where the judges are trusting the cases that they're bringing, and they're prosecuting real serious crime in Chicago?

I know that's what he's trying to do.

That's the message that he's sending.

But, you know, they've, they've kind of stepped on some landmines along the way.

And so we'll be watching to see if, if they can kind of get things back on track.

Well, to your point, Jon more than 100 former federal prosecutors have signed on to an excoriating letter calling for the resignation of US Attorney Boutros.

Now across two episodes, our listeners have heard from the defense team that lived the case inside the courtroom, and now from one of the primary reporters who chronicled it from outside, together offering a, a fuller picture of how prosecutorial accountability actually happens in this country, and it is messy.

It is real, real messy.

Jon Seidel, thank you so much for joining us here on this episode of "The Presumption of Innocence." That's all the time we have for today.

But I would encourage our listeners to pay close attention to Jon's ongoing coverage of the Broadview Six case for the Chicago Sun-Times for updates on the broader issues that are flowing from this truly extraordinary case.

Until next time, I'm your host, Matt Adams.

Take care.