Episode 90

Broadview Six Scandal, Part I: Inside the Grand Jury Room

Hosted by Matt Adams

“This U.S. attorney, within four hours of dismissing this indictment and hearing from a federal judge how bad the conduct was by his prosecutors, sends an all-office email to all 100-plus young federal prosecutors calling the behavior of these line prosecutors courageous and strong ... You're sending the message to your team, 'Hey, go out there, bury stuff, commit wrongdoing. I've got your back. In fact, I'm going to praise you when it's done. I don't care what this federal judge tells me.'"

What happens when the very safeguards built into our justice system are tested from within? Can the institution entrusted to uphold them be trusted to hold itself accountable?

Host Matt Adams sits down with defense attorneys Nancy DePodesta and Chris Parente, both former federal prosecutors who represented two of the “Broadview Six” defendants indicted by a grand jury following a protest outside the Broadview Processing Center, a federal immigration processing facility located in a suburb of Chicago

This episode pulls back the curtain on what actually happened inside that grand jury room — including a prosecutor accused of improper contact with jurors outside the proceedings and redacted transcripts that a federal judge had to fight to see in full. It builds toward a dramatic turn: the U.S. Attorney personally appearing in court to dismiss all remaining charges with prejudice.

Nancy and Chris share how they first sensed something was wrong, the extraordinary lengths it took to get the full transcripts released, and what accountability could look like going forward, including a pending motion for an independent prosecutor. The conversation closes with hard-won lessons for defense lawyers, prosecutors, and judges navigating high-profile, emotionally charged cases.

Look for Part Two of this podcast episode, featuring a Chicago Sun-Times reporter who covered the Broadview Six case, coming soon.

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 today we're talking about what happens when the people charged with enforcing the law break it, and what it takes to hold them accountable.

Let's set the scene for you.

In September 2025, six individuals protested outside a federal immigration processing facility in Broadview, Illinois, during what the Trump administration called Operation Midway Blitz, an ICE deportation campaign.

The Broadview Six defendants are loosely politically affiliated individuals, and this case boils down to perhaps what is the most shocking example of prosecutorial misconduct in recent history.

Today, we're going to talk in the first of a two-part series unpacking this case and its implications for the rule of law in our country.

I want to welcome Nancy Podesta and Chris Parente to the program.

Nancy's a partner at Taft in Chicago.

She's a former AUSA.

She is the counsel for defendant Michael Rabbit, a Chicago 45th Ward Democratic committeeman in the Broadview Six case.

And Christopher Parente, he's a partner at Cheronis & Parente in Chicago.

He also is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.

He as well is a former federal prosecutor, and he has represented defendant Brian Shaw in the Broadview Six case.

So today we are really going to be talking about the counsel for these six defendants, and I want to welcome you both to the program because this is among the most important topics that I think we could possibly talk about on a program called "The Presumption of Innocence," because this is truly an affront to every constitutional norm and every principle of due process that our country stands for.

But Chris and Nancy, welcome to the program.

Thanks, Matt.

Thank you for having us.

So let me jump right into it and, and I'll start with you, Nancy.

What was your initial reaction when Michael Rabbit came to you for representation?

Well, first of all, he found out that he was indicted when he was celebrating his 30th anniversary in Portugal.

So I got a call from him while he was away.

He had no information that he was even under investigation, so it was rather shocking to find out that he had actually been indicted.

I quickly, you know, promptly watched the video of what occurred that, you know, accompanied the government's press release in this case.

And there was such a great discrepancy between what was described in the indictment versus what was depicted in the video.

So that right there was an indication.

There were so many indications and reasons to fight this from the start, but that was an early one for sure.

Well, just to set the stage for our audience, a federal grand jury indicted all six on felony conspiracy to interrupt, hinder, and impede a federal officer, plus some misdemeanor charges.

None of the six was ever personally accused of committing vandalism.

The best the government could point to was a scratched vehicle and a damaged windshield wiper.

But Chris, I want to turn it over to you for just a second.

How did you come to represent Brian Straw?

What was that conversation like when you got retained?

We heard Nancy's side of the situation here, but this is a hotly contested issue.

The ICE roundups in our country have been the source of protests, whether you're in favor of aggressive immigration enforcement or not.

That's not our job to debate on this program today.

But now we have criminal, federal criminal charges against your two clients.

Chris, tell us about your initial reactions when you got into the case representing your client, Brian Straw.

Yeah.

And again, Matt, thanks for having us on.

I mean, Brian Straw and, and myself were both baseball dads.

We met through youth baseball.

My son and his son play on Little League teams out in the suburb that we live in in Oak Park.

So right before Broadview Six, as part of this Operation Midway Blitz disaster that's going on here in Chicago with DOJ, I represented a woman named Marimar Martinez, who was shot five times by ICE, and I was able to, you know, show all the mistakes that the DOJ made in that case and get that indictment dismissed.

And so at, at these baseball games, Brian said to me, "Hey, if I ever get in trouble," as a joke, right, he would call me as his attorney, never actually thinking that this guy, who's a village trustee in our town and a, a partner at, at a, at a law firm, would ever find himself in, in criminal trouble.

And literally that just-

I've been, I've been a product of one or two of those baseball conversations over the years.

Right?

It seems to be a good source of business.

Yeah.

And so, like, not more than two weeks after that conversation, he calls me up and he said the FBI just called him based on, you know, a protest that he was at a month prior.

You know, so there's nothing going on for a whole month, and then out of the blue, the FBI calls him up and says, "You know, you're indicted and, and you need to find yourself an attorney."

So it was kind of a very odd way to start.

But it also just kind of showed how absurd this entire prosecution was, that you're going after, you know, a partner at a law firm who's a, a baseball dad and, and a village trustee over something like this.

So here is a couple of people, I think it's fair to say, exercising their First Amendment rights, political speech among the highest quantum of protection afforded any form of speech in our system at least, and they're, you know, they're politically affiliated individuals.

They're out there… I myself am in politics.

I get it.

They're out there because their platform allows them to amplify the message.

And they're now charged criminally.

These are legit people, presumably with no criminal history to speak of.

Nancy, as a former AUSA yourself, what was your first impression of the indictment when you read that charging document?

Did anything strike you as unusual from the outset?

Had you seen anything of this variety before in your extensive history being a federal criminal practitioner, on both sides of the paradigm?

There was so much that stood out about this indictment, right?

As you've alluded to already, six of the defendants who were charged in this case are, you know, five out of the six of them you know, either hold elected positions, were running for office or was the campaign manager for one of the individuals who was running for office.

So that stood out right there out of, you know, hundreds of people who were there protesting on that same day.

Then, you know, you mentioned the vandalism.

None of the individuals who were charged in this case were responsible for the windshield wiper or for etching, you know, the word pig as it was described in the indictment on the vehicle or any other damage that was done.

There was-

They were, they were

merely accused of being there.

Essentially, yes.

I mean, their presence there put them into the conspiracy, according to the government, according to their theory of the case.

And as I noted already, when you watch the video of what occurred and what these individual defendants…

You know, yes, they are there, and yes, they are protesting, and they're trying to stop a vehicle that just drove into, and this is the vehicle that was driven by the ICE agent, trying to stop the vehicle in order to keep anyone from getting hurt.

I mean, this vehicle just drove into a crowd of individuals.

And so when you look at the totality of the circumstances and what's going on, and the fact that the government charged 372 here, which i- You know, it's hard to come up with cases where the Northern District of Illinois… Chris, I know you've done some research on this, more so than I have.

But where they've charged this case, I'm not aware of a time when they have other than in this indictment.

Chris, you spent a decade as a federal prosecutor in the very same office that brought these charges.

What was it like to be on the other side of this Northern District of Illinois prosecution with the background you have coming out of that office?

Yeah, I mean, look, it, it was so disappointing, and it continues to be disappointing.

I mean, you know, Nancy and myself and all the other former federal prosecutors that, that went through that office, I mean, that office was led by Pat Fitzgerald, right?

Like, he is the gold standard of, of US attorneys across the country, and within the past year, that office has, you know, lost every shred of credibility it has with the community that it, it, it, it's supposed to serve.

That's the issue here.

And again, going back to that Marimar Martinez case, right in, into this case, I have lost just so much respect for the office, right?

I mean, the, the job of these people is to do the right thing, and they have lost their way.

And, and keep in mind, the system worked here, right?

The system worked.

The grand jury said no to this.

They said, "This is not a legitimate prosecution. No." And it was only when this-

Two, two or three times, right, Chris?

Right.

Yeah, but, like, that, that's how the process should work, right?

You… Hey, prosecutors, you bring in a case, you think it's righteous.

These people who are made up of, of members of the community, they tell you whether you can even, you know, get past go, and they said no, which as you know, Matt, is completely rare.

Why did they just stop and, and let it go at that point?

They've done their job.

They've brought a case.

The, the people said, "Nope, you don't have it here.

Move on." But they couldn't do that because of the undue influence coming from DC in this case.

Well, Nancy, your client, Michael Rabbit, as you mentioned, is a, a Democratic committeeman and elected official.

From the beginning, your defense raised concerns about the selective and politically motivated prosecution that might be underway here.

At what point did that concern crystallize for you, and was there evidence to back it up?

So I think that that was a concern that we all had that … And when I say we all, meaning our clients as well as the defense attorneys involved from this case from the very beginning.

When you simply look at the names on that indictment, it struck us that these are individuals who are elected or otherwise extremely active in politics.

So that was something right from the start that was very striking to us.

We are still trying to get information, you know, as to the role of others outside of the US Attorney's Office in Chicago.

There certainly is suggestion that others outside of Chicago had an impact and were influencing this prosecution.

But we're fighting for that discovery to this very day.

Chris, the indictment, as you said, came after three grand jury sessions.

One was a "no bill," such a low probability in this world.

The, the saying goes, you can indict a ham sandwich to underpin the notion that it, it really,

All you have to do is articulate something to, to meet the probable cause standard, the bare minimum in our system to secure an indictment.

But there was indeed a "no bill," then an aborted grand jury session, and then in the third instance, an indictment.

You both presented cases to grand juries in your careers as prosecutors.

Have you ever seen a sequence like that?

First Chris, then Nancy, I, I want to get your thoughts to just really drive home to our audience the notion of how exceptionally rare … This, this does not happen.

This is not the system of grand juries.

As you stated, Chris, there is, I think, almost an assumption that if you get "no billed" in your first go, you're not going back to the well.

You got "no billed" and you move on to something else.

Yeah.

I mean, look, I view it as like in those movies where the patient's dead and they use those little electric chargers to try to bring them back to life.

Like, this indictment was dead, right?

The grand jury said no.

As we all know, if you can't get it past the grand jury, you're never going to get it, you know, through, through an actual trial jury.

And it … They wouldn't give up on it.

And to your point about how do we know that there was undue influence here coming from DC, that's why.

These, these were irrational actions taken by an office that Nancy and I both worked in, that you would never do this in the way that they did.

So that first grand jury said no.

That should've ended it.

Instead, they come back a second time, and it's not like they did new investigation, there's new evidence.

They present the same thing to this grand jury.

And this time, when a grand juror says literally, "This is a crock of shit. Why are you bringing it back to us?" The prosecutor throws them out of the room, right?

I mean, you're talking about these steps that are just so aggressive from the US Attorney's office to get this thing back to life and across that finish line.

You have to question, why are they doing this over such a stupid case to begin with?

And then when that didn't work, there's a third session, a third week.

They bring the exact same indictment back.

Again, no new evidence, all the same stuff.

And this time, the US Attorney himself, Andrew Boutros, makes an unheard of appearance in front of the grand jury that morning saying, "Hey, if anyone has problems with immigration cases, raise your hand. We have a special process for you."

I mean, can you imagine being in that grand jury room and hearing from the US Attorney himself with a message like that to identify yourself as someone who might have issues with immigration cases as they're being charged by this administration?

So I- I've never seen such misconduct in my life.

And you have to question, why are they doing all of this over such a case that has really no merit to begin with?

So that's why we know that there's other things in the background here, and we're going to figure out what they are.

Nancy, you ever seen an aborted session like that second one?

I have never ever heard of grand jurors getting dismissed because they oppose a case.

They are there to be the gatekeeper, right?

They were doing their job, but instead they get kicked out of the grand jury.

I, I mean, the … I have never heard of such a thing.

I don't know if we'll ever hear of such a thing again.

It's just so unfathomable.

And then, as Chris mentioned the fact that the US Attorney, on the third time that they were appearing before this grand jury to get an indictment, appears that same morning, is just so extraordinary.

So the absolute lengths that they went to to get an indictment here is certainly indicative that they were doing this to because they were answering to somebody else.

I, I would call it twisting yourself in a pretzel is, is probably the best way that I could describe it.

I've never seen anything quite like this, and I'm not sure we will again.

Let's sure hope we don't.

But from that high-level overview that the two of you bring from your perspectives joining as defense counsel to these two charged individuals, your early thoughts on the indictment.

Let's drill back in to really what the central core issue is.

What was happening inside the grand jury room as this process that is supposed to, as you said, be the gatekeeper function of due process.

It is your first step as a criminal defendant in the criminal justice system, and it's the first taste of due process that you get, yet this was flawed from the beginning.

So let's dig in deeper about what was going on in that grand jury room, and how the defense team uncovered it.

Because as we know, and our audience knows from listening to this program, the grand jury process is generally secretive.

Only if you have some ability to sort of pierce in because of misconduct do you really get transparency into it.

And at that, you may not get full transparency even.

But Nancy you know, obviously grand jury proceedings are shrouded with secrecy under Rule 6E.

Walk us through how the defense team first became aware that something had gone wrong inside that grand jury room, and what the initial strings you began to pull were.

So let me say this to start.

We had a sense … First of all, as I mentioned before, 372 was charged, and the government had changing theories of its prosecution.

With respect to Section 372, it's, there are three different clauses under which the government can pursue its conspiracy case.

And at one point in the case, the government dismisses two of the defendants, and then it decides that it's not going to proceed under the second and third prongs of 372.

And I apologize for getting so technical here, but it's really what started to unravel this, or really push our request for the grand jury transcripts.

And they were only going to proceed under that first clause of 372.

Yet they continued to use language, the hinder and impede language, associated with that third clause.

So we had real concerns you know, early on that they misinstructed the members of the grand jury regarding the law.

As early as December 3, we were asking for the prosecution to provide to us, give us the law that you instructed the grand jury on with prior to them returning an indictment in this case.

And they repeatedly refused to do that.

Nobody envisioned, once we finally got to see what was in the transcripts, the type of conduct that occurred before the grand jury.

I would say that we were thinking that based on their continued misstatement of the law in court proceedings, in the indictment itself, that they had just gotten it wrong.

But, but what you found was worse.

And Chris, you told reporters in one interview that it would take, quote, "two lines in a transcript to prove possible prosecutorial misconduct." What did you mean by that, and what were those lines in the transcript?

Yeah.

And, and, and I guess to set the stage here, right, there's, there's two issues that, that went on here, right?

There's the misconduct of the grand jury, which was bad and, almost unheard of, but what we think the, the worst part of this entire thing was the cover-up, right?

So you know, what this AUSA did in the grand jury should never have happened.

And I, I, I try to put myself in that place, and it's hard to, to see how it can happen.

But that's one thing.

That's a mistake.

Shouldn't have happened.

What happened after that with the deceiving of this court by multiple federal prosecutors is the most troubling part to me, right?

And so that's what this came down to, was, "Okay, your prosecutor made a mistake in the grand jury. Own it," right?

"Tell the court, 'This is what happened.

Here's what we're going to do to fix it.'" Instead, under this new administration that we're, that we're operating under, they went into the "No, let's try to bury this.

Let's try to hide this.

Let's demonize defense counsel for even asking for these things and, and call them all sorts of names, that they're paranoid," and you know, all this other stuff.

And so what this came down to was eventually the judge at least agreed to look at the transcripts, not give them to us, to look at them.

And when the government produced them to the judge, they redacted portions of it, which again, as a former federal prosecutor, I could never come up with a reason why I would redact anything that would-

So, so let's stop there.

Yeah.

Let's stop there for just a second because I-

Yeah

… Matt Adams: I really want to highlight how rare this is.

The judge, Rule 60 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure says grand jury proceedings are secret, meaning as defense lawyers, we don't get to sit in there and, and find out what's going on.

And here you are, procedurally, the supervising judge over this grand jury says, "Show me. Show me in camera, as it, as it goes, that I, I want to look at what's going on in the grand jury." And the prosecution has the unmitigated gall to actually redact the, the transcript.

Yeah.

Which, which again, is so, you know, again, you put yourself in that mindset as a prosecutor.

You're like, "Why would I ever redact something going to the judge," right?

It's not in the public docket.

There was no reason for it.

So people are convinced that, like, we had, you know, there's grand jurors leaking information to us.

It's not grand jurors leaking information, it's common sense.

Like, you would never redact something going to a judge unless there's an issue.

And so once we knew that, that, that stuff was going on and the way that the government was playing these shell games with things, we knew to keep pushing, and that's why we kept pushing.

And so you know, the judge is like, "Mr. Parente, fine, you know, they handed me redacted transcripts, but they only redacted 30 lines." Like, what harm could have happened in 30 lines?

And there's two things here.

One, obviously, I, I do think a prosecutor, and you saw it in this case, can do a ton of damage in two to three lines in the way that this prosecutor started out the grand jury session saying, "Hey, you know me, you trust me.

I wouldn't bring you a case that I don't believe in." That's only two or three lines. But more to the point, the prosecutors who were in the courtroom when she said that knew that it was way more than 30 lines. They knew that they withheld entire pages from that judge, and they never raised their hand to say, "Hey, Judge, you're under a misunderstanding.

We actually withheld a lot more than just the 30 lines." That's the most troubling part of all of this.

Yeah, and Nancy-

And if I can just jump in there.

Because I, I have to agree with what Chris just said.

You know, what happened in the grand jury was wrong.

It never should have happened.

It is egregious.

But the efforts and the … To cover up and conceal from even the court when they were submitting something under seal and ex parte is just absolutely shocking.

And the lengths that they went to to conceal the misconduct that occurred instead of do the right thing, and they had the opportunity to do the right thing.

If they screwed up in the grand jury, they can go back and correct that.

But they didn't.

They perpetuated it.

And, and Nancy, you, you called the redactions the, quote, "most problematic," unquote, aspect of what was here.

Judge Perry agreed with you, and after she examined the full transcripts, the unredacted transcripts.

How did you all fight to get those unredacted transcripts before the court?

And tell us a little bit about what those unredacted transcripts revealed.

It was a constant fight.

Literally, we were asking for the grand jury transcripts as early as December 3 of 2025, and thankfully, the defense team continued to ask and continued to ask.

It was not until the pretrial conference that, you know, thankfully, Chris, to his credit, again asked for… You know, after we had been told no on a number of occasions, that Chris again raised, you know, " Can the court look at the unredacted transcripts?"

We were five days away from trial, I believe, or the less than a week away from trial when we finally got some insight as to what was in those transcripts.

And, and what, what was there?

What did you find?

So in-- It's what we've been talking about here.

It's the fact that a grand juror referred to the case as "a crock of shit."

Literally, those were the words of the grand juror.

That there was pushback, that there was resistance.

There was vouching from the prosecutor for the case itself.

There was a reference to an appearance by the US Attorney it later turned out, and that's what prompted us to ask for, you know, whether or not Mr.

Boutros ever appeared before the grand jury.

There was the dismissal of members of the grand jury.

The prosecutor acknowledged having communications with certain members of the grand jury outside of the grand jury.

So I mean, there was

extensive misconduct.

This, this prosecutorial misconduct that if engaged in by defense counsel, they would be seeking disbarment of, of defense lawyers engaged in that type of misconduct.

Potentially, if that type of misconduct was being undertaken by defense lawyers, those defense lawyers themselves would probably face criminal charges themselves for such conduct.

This is striking and appalling in so many ways, but one of the things that I find most offensive, Chris, is the line prosecutor, AUSA Sheri Mecklenburg, reportedly had substantive improper contact with jurors outside the grand jury room.

And anybody who's practiced this area of law has been to a grand jury.

If you're a defense lawyer, you generally sit in a conference room and wait to see if your client wants to come out and ask you a question.

They're permitted to come and go as they please.

But as defense lawyers, it's usually we bring our computer with us, we sit in a, a conference room, we, you know, respond to emails, do other work, and await word from our client whether they're done or whether they have a question that they'd like some substantive guidance on, and, and that affords them the ability, our presence, but we're not in there.

The line prosecutor going and engaging with grand jurors outside the grand jury room and actually going as far as to excuse jurors who disagreed with the government's theory, this whole "crock of shit" nonsense, Just set the stage for our audience on how extraordinary that is because I've been in that environment, not as a prosecutor, but purely as a defense lawyer, and when the grand jurors walk out of that room, I turn the other way.

I walk in another direction.

I put my head down so as not even to acknowledge that they're there out of fear of it being construed as misconduct, and any ethical lawyer does.

How remarkable is it what you uncovered about this AUSA?

Yeah.

And look, this is, again, goes to this message that, that we know is out there that this was not a typical case, that they are engaging in, you know, unethical conduct.

Anything they can do to get this thing across the finish line.

You have to ask yourself, why would they be doing this over a protest case, right?

So they're, they're throwing people out.

They're vouching.

They're having you know, contact with grand jurors outside the grand jury room.

Literally everything that they can do that they're not allowed to do to get this thing across the finish line was, was being used.

And, and, and when I see it, one, I'm just so disappointed that this is, you know, these … This is the office I used to work for, that federal prosecutors are engaging in this misconduct.

But what I really see now is, wait a minute, forget that they're doing it.

We need to figure out why they were doing it, and that's the most troubling part.

Because, look, these prosecutors, you know, they're good people, you know, and I think they want to do the right thing, and for them to make these kind of poor decisions, they must have been under extreme pressure to get this thing indicted.

And you have to ask why, and what could have caused career prosecutors to, to jeopardize their, everything they've ever worked for for this one case.

Why were they doing it for this one case?

And again, I think we'll get there eventually, but you're going to see pressure from Blanche, pressure from DC, pressure from the White House to, to send the message, "Hey, if you want to get out there and stand in front of our ICE agents' vehicles, you're, you're going to be dealt with, whether, whether it's legal or, or not."

And, and they're going to do whatever they can to get that indictment done.

And it's, it's extremely disappointing, but there's no other reason that they would engage in all these sort of tricks and, and nefarious conduct to get, to get a case that should never have been indicted, indicted.

Explain to our audience what vouching is and why it's prohibited in the federal grand jury context.

Yeah.

So essentially, it's using your own credibility to sort of bolster the case, right?

To, you know, give the case credibility, right?

You're speaking for the case, right?

You're speaking for the charges.

You're trying to use your own personal credibility in order, you know, in this case, to get a true bill.

I want to go back to something that Chris was saying, if I can, for a quick moment.

There's so much focus on, and, and rightfully so, right?

There's a lot of focus on what went on in the grand jury.

It is so egregious.

It is shocking.

And, and, you know, and rightfully, it is getting attention.

But I also think it is so critical not to make the prosecutor here in the grand jury the sole scapegoat for what happened here.

There was so much that happened once she was no longer on the case, and I'm talking about the concealment of what occurred, the cover-up of what occurred that there were others-

The cover-up is always worse than the crime, right?

Right?

And it… You know what?

And it is true here.

And so there's, there were so… I, I don't know if I can say so many others, but there were others involved here that worked to cover up the misconduct.

And to Chris's point, to what end?

For what reason?

What was the pressure that they were getting in order to see this prosecution through?

Yeah.

A junior prosecutor on the case later said he initially viewed what he was seeing in that grand jury room as, quote, "personal style." But he later acknowledged and came to understand it was, quote, "At a minimum, arguably misconduct." Chris, what does that, to Nancy's point, tell you about the culture inside your former office?

Yeah.

I mean, and, and look, that prosecutor, although new to the office, had prior experience at, at another government agency where he did grand jury work, is my understanding.

So I, I don't buy that excuse.

And, and more to the point, he sat in that courtroom for nine months and heard us demand these transcripts and say that we think there was something that went on there.

He heard the judge say what, what harm could have happened in 30 lines and, and never once did he raise his hand to say, "Hey, Judge, I think you're misinformed here." And that's disappointing, right?

Because, again, when you take that job, you take that job because it's, it's a public service.

Your job is not to win any case.

Your job is to do the right thing.

And, and in my opinion, all three of those prosecutors kind of, you know did not do what was required of them at, when the moment was there, and, and that's disappointing.

And I, and again, I have to ask myself why.

And, and to your point about the cover-up is worse than the crime, I mean, it is.

Because to me, you know, again, the, the grand jury stuff, it's happening in real time.

Maybe she's, you know, she's making poor choices.

But for a prosecutor to sit down in front of a computer and go line by line and say, "I'm going to redact this. I'm going to redact this. I'm going to redact this," that is so wrong.

That is so wrong and so intentional that the fact that that person is still working in, in the department, it… I can't understand what, what world we are living in right now where there's no discipline within the Department of Justice for objective wrongdoing.

Worse than that not only is there no discipline, these people were commended.

These people were called out by the US Attorney and congratulated for being strong, for their courage.

They were actually recognized in a positive way for what they did.

Chris, you called the prosecutors out for, quote, "playing some sort of weird shell game," as you, Nancy, and the other members of the defense group pulled back the veil on this blatant, egregious prosecutorial misconduct.

Explain for our audience some of the tactics you're describing when you make that statement as, as you're fighting to shine the light on what's going on here.

What, what are you seeing from the US Attorney's office?

Yeah, I mean, they were playing games with the justice system, which again, in a civil litigation context, fine.

You're, you're, you're competing parties.

You're trying to win a civil suit.

That's fine.

When you're talking about the Department of Justice, you cannot engage in, in these games to, to win something, right?

So, you know, what they did here that the most, the most telling example to me that there was something wrong in that grand jury was when they dismissed the felony counts.

Remember, the original indictment had a felony count and then six misdemeanor counts, right?

So the grand jury approved all of them.

They're all … It's a, it's a live document.

So when they dismissed the felony count, again, in part to keep these transcripts hidden, those six misdemeanor counts still stood.

They were active counts.

They were live counts.

You could have just gone forward to trial on that.

Instead, they filed a superseding information, which was a carbon copy of the six misdemeanor counts.

So it, it's like doing extra work for no reason.

Like, and again, going back to my time as a federal prosecutor, why would I want to fill out all this extra paperwork and go through all these other hoops when the six misdemeanor charges are still valid?

And you only do that, right, because you're playing the shell game.

"Well, hey, if we do that, it kind of removes the taint of all this misconduct that only we know about, that the court doesn't know about, the defense doesn't know about.

So let's play this game and do that." And that's the disappointing conduct, and that's why there's people at that US Attorney's office up to the US Attorney who knew about what was going on, okayed what was going on, and allowed their prosecutors to lose sight of that North Star of doing the right thing and started playing games with the justice system, and that never, that never works out.

Nancy, let's move to the dramatic conclusion of the case, the day that the US Attorney himself walked into the court and asked for a dismissal.

I, I just want everybody to, to get the sense for this.

It, it's second nature to us because we work in this world every day, but the US Attorney is a political figurehead of an office.

They are not generally the ones that are doing the day-to-day court appearances.

It's a very rare occasion.

I know some do some cases just to say they did, but it-- they are a political appointee.

They are the titular head of that office.

They are the chief law enforcement officer from a federal standpoint in that judicial district.

That job is a big job.

You're appointed by the president of the United States.

You, in most instances, are confirmed by the Senate.

You have a big job, and you're not doing the day-to-day.

You're leaving that to Assistant United States Attorneys, members of your office, the rank-and-file line prosecutors, if you will, to go in and to handle the mundane acts that take place every day in criminal cases.

But take us inside the courtroom on May 21, 2026.

The visual I have on this as being one of the most dramatic moments in recent memory that I can think of, save maybe the acquittal in the OJ Simpson case, the not guilty verdict there.

US Attorney Andrew Boutros personally appears before Judge Perry and moves to dismiss all remaining charges with prejudice.

I mean, what was it like being in that room, Nancy?

You know, it's interesting that you ask that question because I literally, when I left court that day, and for the next day or so, I was constantly replaying what occurred over the course of that day in my head, right?

You just don't see this happening.

And by the way, and at this point in time, we're talking about a misdemeanor case, right?

To your point, it is-- US Attorney is not in court on a day-to-day basis.

You, the day was broken up into two parts because in the first part of the morning there was a proceeding that occurred and was under seal.

We knew based on what had occurred, it is no longer under seal, but we were coming back that afternoon, and that's when Mr. Boutros made his appearance.

We were coming back that afternoon for the government to say whether or not they opposed the earlier hearing being unsealed.

Mr. Boutros was in court, and I think that we all knew at that point in time that the charges were going to be dismissed.

He made some comments that the judge rightfully called him out on.

I think that he was still trying to save the office, save the prosecutors by saying that he believed that they did not intentionally mislead the court.

It's interesting how quickly he was able to come to that conclusion.

It is all of our hope that this will be further investigated and looked into.

But it was, it was unlike anything that I've ever experienced in court.

Yeah.

You, you, you said in some public statements afterwards, Nancy, that it was, quote-unquote, "shocking," and quote, "No words to describe the conduct," unquote.

I've come to really understand how dramatic that must have been.

In your post-dismissal remarks, Chris, you have since described the prosecutorial conduct as appalling, including here today and quote, "Possibly directed from the White House." What leads you to that conclusion, and what steps do you intend to take on behalf of your client to ferret that out?

Yeah, and we are … You know, look, we're asking the judge, this case is still active, to appoint a special prosecutor to do a, an actual investigation from the other side about what, what, what happened here.

Who knew, these things when they were going on, and who, who directed the redactions in those transcripts?

And, and going back to your first point about have we ever seen any of this kind?

No, and of course not.

It's so rare.

Why was this happening on this case at this time, right?

I, I don't … You need to look at this in the context of what Midway Blitz was, and you need to look at what was going on at this time.

And what the message that the White House was trying to send out at this time was, "Stay out of the way of our ICE prosecution.

Stay out of the way of our Midway Blitz.

We're coming into your neighborhoods.

We are going to take anybody who has brown skin and put them in a car.

And if it turns out they're citizens, we'll let them go later.

And if not, then they're going to be deported.

And how dare you protest?" And so this was meant to silence protests.

This was a very public case.

They went after specific people associated with the Democratic Party, and they wanted this indictment done.

And even when the system worked and the people of this district, those, strong grand jurors said no, then the US Attorney's Office engaged in every trick of the trade to get this thing across the finish line.

That is disappointing, but that's what this was.

And no, this was not done by the line prosecutor.

This was not done on her own.

I guarantee you that we will get evidence that will show you this was from the beginning directed from DC to Andrew Boutros and then pushed down on his line prosecutors to get this done.

Yeah.

I want to, I want to shift gears once more into sort of the human component of this with respect to both of your clients because in doing what we do in, in the white collar defense world, our clients are usually not accustomed to dealing with the anxieties of the criminal justice system.

I often tell clients that there will be moments of complete boredom in this process, and then moments of absolute sheer terror.

And I can't help but think that the folks you represented, legitimate public servant types who were, whether you agree with it or not, engaging in something that is constitutionally protected, which is the right to protest their government, and that's what makes this country great.

But I'm really interested in getting your sense from both of you how your clients reacted when they learned that the charges were being dismissed.

What did that moment really mean for them and their families?

Because this is the core human element.

We're talking about legal concepts that touch on due process and the rule of law and the, the mistrust and abuse of that process by folks that are tasked with administering it.

But there is a human toll on the other side of that, that I really want to shine through from this discussion today.

So Nancy, start with you.

How, how, how did your client react and what did that moment mean for their family?

I mean, it meant everything.

And thank you for asking the question because I think that from the moment that Michael and his wife were away and learned that he had been indicted, that goes back to October of 2025.

I mean, their lives changed.

I mean, this was something that they carried with them, not just Michael, but his wife, his kids, that this impacted every aspect of their lives and was constantly a burden and weighing on them.

And look, even though he knew he had done nothing wrong, the fact that you are still in this situation and in effect have to prove your innocence, right?

That these false charges have been brought against you.

But he was still facing for some time a felony indictment, and then after that, even misdemeanor charges.

This is somebody who has never, ever had any sort of run-in with the laws, no criminal history whatsoever.

He is passionate about immigration issues.

He is the son of an immigrant.

His wife is the daughter of an immigrant.

You know, he went to Broadview.

It was his first time that he was at Broadview to protest, to speak out against the inhumane conditions that were occurring within Broadview, and he finds himself the target of an indictment.

This took a toll on every aspect of his life, from his professional life, financial, personal, family.

For this to go away, even though he knew he had done nothing wrong, you can't put that into words.

I wouldn't even know how to try.

Chris, talk about the human dimensions that this ordeal took

on your client.

Yeah.

And look, Brian Straw was he's blessed to be from Oak Park, which is where I'm from.

And, and the community support that he had was, was unreal.

I mean, every hearing that we had the courtroom was packed.

We had to use overflow courtrooms because so many community members wanted to be there to support what Brian was doing, which again, was, was way more than just about Brian.

It was about standing up for the undocumented and those that were being persecuted by the department at this time.

And so to see the members of the community being there, like our mayor, our town's mayor prepped with me for hours because she was going to be a character witness at this trial in support of Brian.

But the, the real hard part here is Brian has two small children, right?

I told you how we met through baseball, and, you know, his kids would wake up with nightmares, right?

And wondering, you know, is their dad going to go to prison?

As Brian, you know, tells the story, it's, you know, when your, when your young child says, "Hey, I'm worried about monsters under the bed," you can kind of reason with them and explain to them why you don't have to be worried about that.

But when the, when the concern is, "Dad, I'm worried that, you, you know, you're going to go to federal prison," in, in, in a, in the climate that we're in, I mean, those are conversations that Brian never imagined having to have with his small children, right?

That his own government would turn on him like this for standing up for other people.

So it's, it's going to take a, a long, long time for his kids to kind of get over the mental trauma that they've gone through as part of this.

And, you know, for Brian, you know, being in the spotlight and, and with the threat of federal prison, the threat of losing his law license, right?

How he supports his family all that is real.

And look, the government knows that's real.

And part of this entire thing was to send a message to hurt these people so that even though we got the indictment dismissed, there's still tremendous financial harm, tremendous mental anguish that these people went through and that, that, that hurt their families and their reputations.

Yeah, and, and, and what's, what's almost appalling to me on this, and, and I'm expressing an opinion now, is, is the idea that your client could have lost his law license.

But there's a fighting chance that these prosecutors get through this with, with their law licenses intact, and to me, that is just astonishing and, and remarkably appalling.

I've led the charge for the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey against prosecutorial misconduct in New Jersey for years, and seldom are there consequences, or at least consequences of magnitude for prosecutors who bend the rules to try to fix an outcome at the conclusion of the criminal justice process.

And that is something I want to go into next, is what type of accountability do you expect, Nancy, for what has gone on here?

And what are you and your client going to try to do vis-a-vis accountability?

I can tell you from personal experience that I've been in the position before where the Department of Justice has dismissed a case that they should never have brought on the strength of the same types of issues, perhaps not as egregious, but the same generalized framework of issues that we're talking about here.

And they've done it on the eve of trial, and it, it's a dramatic and emotional moment.

And I've had clients come back to me and tell me, "Hey, I just-- I'm glad this is over.

I don't have the appetite to continue on fighting.

I recognize that I have potential recourse, whether it's a civil case against the government under the Hyde Amendment or what have you.

I, I, I just, I need to put this chapter to bed, and I need to move on with my life."

And I've … the lawyer and advocate in me is disappointed in hearing that, right?

Because I want to, I want blood now because of what has gone on and the egregious misconduct that has been occasioned upon my client.

But on the other hand, I completely as a human understand the instinct to just close a chapter and move on with life.

Life is too short.

Nancy, what's your client poised to do about this?

What types of accountability is your client seeking?

To Michael's credit, and I think to each of our clients' credits and I understand the position.

If they were to say to us, "I'm done. I need for this chapter to be over," I would get that.

But to each of our clients' credits, at least where they stand right now, they want accountability.

They want answers.

And rightfully so.

You know, you ask the question about what sort of accountability do we expect.

You know, back in the day, Chris mentioned earlier our former boss, Pat Fitzgerald.

If he learned about something like this going on in the grand jury, I have no doubt that he would've done the right thing and referred it to OPR, right?

That's the Office of Professional Responsibility.

You know, I don't even know if OPR-

In ordinary times, these people would be fired, period.

There'd be an investigation, and there would be, and there would be accountability, right?

But I don't trust that that is going to happen internally at the Department of Justice.

I have no reason to think that that is going to happen.

In fact, to the opposite, Andrew Boutros apparently already made his own conclusion that none of these individuals intentionally misled the court.

So we are fighting as hard as we can to get discovery in this case pursuant to the Hyde Amendment, and we are also fighting for, and have filed a motion for an independent prosecutor.

If there is a case that calls out for an independent prosecutor, it is this case.

And without that, I don't know how there will be accountability.

We need to get answers.

We need to understand what occurred here.

And it is extremely troubling that some of these same prosecutors are still in court appearing in cases.

And yet, as Judge Perry herself said, the trust has been broken.

If these people have concealed things from the court, misrepresented things to the court, and they are s- how can they still be appearing?

In cases, and how can we trust them to do the right thing?

Yeah.

Okay.

Chris, what, what, what about your client?

Where, where, where does the accountability begin, or do they just want to turn the page and move on?

Yeah, and I've said this before, but the US Attorney's office picked the wrong guy when they charged Brian Straw because he is not going to let this go.

He, he was out there that day, not, not because he had anyone detained at the Broadview facility, but because he was standing up for others.

And when he sees wrongdoing by our government, he is going to put his own finances and reputation on the line to, to protect others.

And so he's going to see this through until the end.

So they made a miscalculation by charging him.

But to Nancy's point about accountability, you know, the US Attorney's office bread and butter is deterrence, right?

They stand up in front of judges every day asking judges to sentence people to federal prison to send the message to others that this conduct will not be tolerated.

And here you have misconduct by their own, and they have completely mailed it in.

Forget about deterrence.

This US attorney, within four hours of dismissing this indictment and hearing from a federal judge how bad the conduct was by his prosecutors, sends an all-office email to all 100-plus young federal prosecutors calling the behavior of these line prosecutors courageous and strong.

That's the opposite of deterrence.

You're encouraging this wrongdoing.

You're sending the message to your team, "Hey, go out there, bury stuff, commit wrongdoing.

I've got your back.

In fact, I'm going to praise you when it's done.

I don't care what this federal judge tells me." I mean, that's, that's the disappointing part of this, and I don't know how these prosecutors are allowed to appear in other courtrooms and how this US Attorney's office is allowed to argue deterrence to imprison other people to send messages when they're not willing to hold their own accountable.

That's the most disappointing part of this.

It sounds to me like the dismissal may have ended the criminal case, but an entirely new chapter of litigation has been opened, and I'm hopeful that the two of you might come back and talk to us some more about that outcome once we have some more concrete results from it.

But let's turn into our waning segment here as we, as we close our time together and, and really just kind of speak about some final reflections on what we've learned from this dramatic case.

For our audience's benefit, I'm going to have a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times on this very program who has extensively covered this matter in our next of this two-part segment on the Broadview Six case to really underpin how important it is that the public writ large see what happened here to ensure that it never happens again and to shine a bright light on what is an affront to our criminal justice system.

But if we're talking about closing reflections what is one lesson that you can distill from the Broadview Six case, Nancy, for defense lawyers, prosecutors, and judges handling what can be high-profile, emotionally charged, politically toxic type of cases moving forward.

Wow.

I've learned a ton from this case.

You know, there was a time where I really felt as a former US Attorney or Assistant United States Attorney, you know, I believe in the office, I believe in its mission, but here I have learned I, I mean, unfortunately, I hate, I hate to say this, but cannot just take them at their word and to continue to fight even when you're told no, even when your motions are-- get denied to keep fighting for the answers, to keep fighting for the truth.

There were numerous requests for those grand jury transcripts that were denied, and, you know, I think about how, you know, but for getting those transcripts at the la- at the very last hour, how we would've proceeded to trial on this case.

And I do feel confident, I want to say, that our clients would have been acquitted at trial.

I don't think that the government at all had the evidence, but it's to keep fighting.

To keep fighting if, if you believe in the fight and you believe in the cause, which we all did here and that there was more happening just because, you know, don't give up.

Chris, what are the lessons learned and the road ahead?

Yeah, you know, Nancy's don't give up.

I mean, there, there was a moment in this case where the judge issued a minute order, which I think you could fairly classify as a bench slap against our request, our repeated request for these transcripts and, and for answers to the shell-

I like what you did there, a bench slap.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like it.

Yeah.

I mean, it was, it was a very terse… And, and to, and to her credit, I, I get it.

Like sh- I, you know, I, I get it.

We repeatedly asked for this, but we knew in our hearts that something wasn't right here, and, and we kept pushing.

And, and so it, you know, a lot, you know, you don't, you don't want to get kind of a, a, a bench slap by a judge like that, but we did.

And it was, you know, three or four weeks after that where we, we still went back to the well and, and argued again with I call a Hail Mary at the pretrial conference, and, and it finally got… We finally got some movement.

So don't give up on your convictions.

But the, the second piece, which I might, might go hand in hand with your second segment here, is the use of the press.

Honestly, this administration, this Trump administration seems to only respond a lot of times.

They don't care about legal briefs.

They don't care about bu- what the law says.

They care about are they getting bad press on, on on newspapers and on TV.

And again, from the Marimar Martinez case, which was a, a Midway Blitz case, into this case I, I feel like it was the use of the press to kind of have like a third, a third line here, where it was we were able to, you know, make our legal arguments, we had our hearings, but then the press, by paying attention to these cases and, and, and giving us a platform to make some of these arguments, in my opinion that has really helped move the ball with this administration that is so sensitive to, to good and bad press.

So, I know who I know Mr. Seidel from the Sun-Times.

He was instrumental in, in helping keep the spotlight on this case and, and keep the public pressure on the US Attorney's office.

Andrew Boutros did not walk into that courtroom and dismiss this indictment because he thought it was the right thing to do.

He, he walked into that courtroom because he knew the black eye that he was going to get the following day on the front page of the Sun-Times.

And I look forward to having Mr. Seidel here on this program in our, in our next segment in this two-part special reporting on this case.

A growing tide of elected leaders from across Illinois has begun to call for US Attorney Boutros' resignation.

There is a, a, a tide of a rising tide, I should say, of, of calls for that resignation.

There is a ton that remains to be learned about why, who, and how this case was being improperly influenced and for perhaps what purpose.

But I want to thank both of my guests today for their time, their candor, and, and, and candidly, your courage in speaking publicly while proceedings are ongoing.

The presumption of innocence isn't just a legal standard or a catchy name for a podcast.

It's a promise, and it has real-life consequences.

When the government breaks that promise, it's up to attorneys like Nancy and Chris to hold them accountable.

I really thank you again for your time today.

For our listeners, we're going to have a second segment on this with John Seidel from the Chicago Sun-Times to get the media account of how this particular case unfolded, and I genuinely invite listeners to join us for that episode.

Until then, however, that's all the time we have on this episode of "The Presumption of Innocence." I'm your host, Matt Adams.

Until next time, take care.

Bye-bye.