A grand juror blasted a case brought by President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice as a “crock of s--t” in a confrontation with one of the federal prosecutors seeking an indictment.
The U.S. attorney’s office later dropped all charges against the four remaining defendants in the “Broadview Six” case involving a group of protesters arrested outside a federal immigration detention center in the Chicago area.
Prosecutors originally charged six anti-ICE activists—including then-Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh—with felony conspiracy charges before dropping the charges against two defendants and reducing the remaining counts to misdemeanors.
It took three grand jury sessions to secure an indictment.
The case was dropped entirely in late May after Judge April Perry, a Biden appointee, discovered the DOJ had tried to cover up the prosecution’s grand jury misconduct by redacting parts of the transcript.
Grand jury transcripts released Tuesday by the defense confirm that Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg spoke to grand jurors outside the courtroom, offered her personal opinion vouching for the strength of the evidence, and dismissed grand jurors who refused to indict the protesters, CBS News reported.
They also show an incredible exchange between Mecklenburg and one of the dismissed jurors.
The transcript shows a juror asking Mecklenburg, “Are you actually presenting any new actual facts, or just a different viewpoint from your side?”
“OK. I’m feeling the skepticism already,” Mecklenburg responded. “Are you going to be able to listen with an open mind? Tell me the truth.”
“I—no,” the juror replied.
“OK. Then you have to go,” Mecklenburg said.
“I heard this case, like, last week, and I thought it was a crock of s--t then and I still think it is,” the grand juror continued.
“OK. Thank you for your opinion for everybody,” Mecklenburg said. “I kind of had that impression from last week, but thank you.”
“Do you have any other evidence other than [inaudible]?” the juror insisted.
“Have a good evening,” Mecklenburg replied.
After taking the extraordinary step of viewing the full transcripts, Perry reprimanded the district’s Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros for his prosecutors’ behavior.
“Your sole goal is to do justice. Your client is justice itself,” she said. “I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing. That trust has been broken.”
The case was one of several instances over the past month in which judges criticized the DOJ’s lawyers and held them personally responsible for misconduct.
The DOJ has been contacted for comment.
The department previously told the Daily Beast in a statement that those “few isolated events” were “not representative of DOJ’s overall achievements to date.”
Boutros told Perry during a hearing in late May that he had only recently learned of his attorneys’ misconduct, CBS News reported at the time.
He said he decided to drop the felony conspiracy charges after he learned of the vouching and communications with grand jurors, but kept the misdemeanor charges because the grand jury only considers felony charges.
Boutros also said he discovered “in real time” that skeptical grand jurors were being dismissed, and that he called off the grand jury session as soon as he was made aware.
He dismissed the charges entirely after the cover-up attempt was revealed.
