A federal judge in Chicago has ordered the city's top federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros, and three of his assistant U.S. attorneys to testify under oath on November 16 about the collapse of the "Broadview Six" prosecution — the failed felony case against six protesters arrested during the Trump administration's immigration enforcement surge in Chicago. U.S. District Judge April Perry issued the order on Monday, only hours after the former head of the FBI's Chicago field office sued Boutros and other senior Justice Department officials over the same case.
Source: Bloomberg Law
"There is more than an adequate factual basis for the Court to pursue an inquiry as to whether willful false statements were made to the court," Judge Perry wrote in the order, as reported by Bloomberg Law and the Associated Press. It is highly unusual for a sitting U.S. attorney — the chief federal law-enforcement officer for the Northern District of Illinois — to be ordered onto the witness stand in an inquiry into his own office's conduct.
Source: Associated Press, via AmeriLedger
A follow-up to Monday's lawsuit
The order is a major new development in a story Awaaz Punjab reported on Monday, when Douglas DePodesta, who ran the FBI's Chicago field office until July, filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of Illinois against Boutros, the FBI, the Justice Department, Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel. DePodesta alleges he was forced to resign over the summer after Boutros launched what the suit calls a "campaign" inside the Justice Department to blame him for the Broadview Six collapse. He is seeking reinstatement, back pay and damages, and accuses the defendants of defamation, breaches of federal job protections and violations of his constitutional rights. The claims are allegations in a civil complaint; no defendant has filed a response in court.
Source: QNC News
"I was forced to resign. This was by no way voluntary," DePodesta told the ABC7 Chicago I-Team, according to QNC News, and told the Associated Press: "I saw the writing on the wall." His lawsuit alleges that Boutros faced pressure from the Justice Department throughout the immigration crackdown to bring felony charges against protesters, that Boutros sent him emails demanding he open FBI investigations into individuals with political views opposed to the Trump administration, and that Boutros pressed assistant U.S. attorneys to file felony charges "before investigating the objective evidence," when the assistants themselves favoured misdemeanours or no charges at all.
Source: Associated Press, via AmeriLedger
What Judge Perry's seven-page order says
In her seven-page order, Judge Perry questioned Boutros' claim that he did not read the grand jury transcripts when he received them. She wrote that the idea he would approve taking the case back to a grand jury without reviewing that evidence was "nearly unfathomable." She also said the government had become "cagey" about its contacts with Washington, and she set a new deadline of this Thursday for the government to produce records. Perry is also weighing whether to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate possible misconduct, according to QNC News.
Source: QNC News
Federal judges almost never order a sitting U.S. attorney to testify under oath about his own office's representations to the court. Perry's order means the November 16 hearing will examine not just what went wrong in the Broadview Six case, but whether the court itself was misled — a question that can carry professional and even criminal consequences for the lawyers involved.
How the Broadview Six case collapsed
The case grew out of a September 2025 protest outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing facility in Broadview, a suburb west of Chicago, during the federal enforcement push known as Operation Midway Blitz. Prosecutors claimed demonstrators surrounded and damaged a federal agent's SUV, and six people were charged with conspiring to impede the agent. They included Kat Abughazaleh, then a candidate for Congress, Oak Park trustee Brian Straw and Cook County Board hopeful Catherine Sharp. Defence lawyers argued the group had been singled out for its politics.
Source: QNC News
A grand jury initially declined to indict the six — a rare outcome known as a "no bill" — before prosecutors secured charges on October 23, 2025. The case was then dismissed on May 21 of this year after transcripts showed apparent misconduct by a prosecutor in front of the grand jurors, and Boutros apologised to the court. In total, federal prosecutors brought charges against roughly 30 protesters during Operation Midway Blitz, but many of those charges have since been dropped or dismissed.
Source: Associated Press, via AmeriLedger
The October 7 meeting at the heart of the dispute
The most striking allegation in DePodesta's lawsuit concerns a meeting on October 7, 2025, in his Chicago office. According to the complaint, Boutros sat down with Todd Blanche — then the deputy attorney general — FBI Director Kash Patel and Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald, and the group discussed the Broadview Six investigation. Prosecutors went to a grand jury with the case two days later. That account clashes with what Boutros' office told Judge Perry in March, when prosecutors said there had been no communications with anyone outside the office, other than local FBI agents on the case, about investigative or charging decisions — a denial they specifically extended to the White House and Justice Department headquarters. The lawsuit also says Boutros accused DePodesta of working improperly with his sister-in-law, Nancy DePodesta, a lawyer for one of the defendants; DePodesta denies those claims.
Source: QNC News
Why it matters beyond one courtroom
The fight goes to the credibility of the federal prosecutions that accompanied the immigration enforcement surge in Chicago — a city region with one of the largest South Asian and Punjabi communities in the United States, where ICE operations and the court cases that followed them have been watched closely by immigrant families. If a federal judge concludes that prosecutors misled the court while pursuing protest cases, it could affect other Midway Blitz prosecutions and deepen the political dispute over how the crackdown was run. Boutros' office declined to comment on the lawsuit, and the FBI and the Justice Department had not responded to requests for comment, according to the reports.
Source: Chicago Tribune, via Capitol Fax
What happens next
The government's records are due to Judge Perry by Thursday. Boutros and the three assistant U.S. attorneys are scheduled to testify under oath on November 16. The judge is also still deciding whether to appoint a special prosecutor. Separately, DePodesta's civil lawsuit — seeking his job back, back pay and damages — will proceed in the same federal court district, and the defendants will have to respond to his allegations there. Awaaz Punjab will follow both proceedings.