Today Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth called on Chicago U.S. attorney Andrew Boutros to resign charging that his office is adrift in chaos and official misconduct.
On the one hand this is unsurprising. This is a major and growing scandal. It implicates a Republican president. They’re Democrats. And the office has been at the leading edge of policies (Midway Blitz, mass deportation generally) that are deeply unpopular — certainly in Chicago and to varying degrees across the state. So, as I note, to some agree it’s a predictable development.
But there are some additional threads I want to remind you of.
The person behind the key grand jury misconduct in the Broadview Six case was Sheri Mecklenburg. She was the original lead prosecutor and bailed on the case in March for a position as a DOJ detailee working on the Senate Judiciary committee, working under Durbin. It’s still a bit of a mystery what’s behind Mecklenburg’s actions. Her reputation is as a professional and if anything a political liberal. Ideally we shouldn’t be judging assistant U.S. attorneys through that prism. I note it here to note that her background shows little that would explain her committing disbarment-level misconduct on behalf of a case like this absent a lot of outside pressure.
Durbin’s office dismissed her the day after there news broke. I don’t think she would have discussed her own misconduct with Durbin’s staffers. But she may have discussed the general climate of the Chicago office and other misconduct.
One of the Broadview Six defense attorneys, meanwhile, Chris Parente, says that Boutros had contact with the tainted grand jury itself (a claim which Boutros denies). Parente was the one pushing hardest to see the grand jury transcripts. I’ve always had a hunch that that he knew something bad was in those transcripts. He’s a veteran of the same office. People talk.
On Tuesday, Boutros’ office released a “rare special report” again adamantly insisting that he has “never appeared before any grand jury hearing or deliberating evidence on any matter since becoming U.S. Attorney on April 7, 2025”
An additional part of the equation here is that there’s lots of evidence that Mecklenburg’s misconduct was known to many in the office for months. The fact that it was known and there was no attempt to unwind the case tells me this kind of misconduct or level of misconduct became widespread under Boutros and the pressure to back up Midway Blitz.
We’re looking for answers to all these questions. As we report this story out, I’m very interested to hear from lawyers in Chicago who know the players and especially some of the many assistant U.S. Attorneys who’ve left that office over the last year. You know things. We want to know them. See our tips page for how to contact us and if necessary how to use encrypted communications to do so.