Chicago federal prosecutor drops charges against activists amid misconduct allegations

CHICAGO -- Chicago's top federal prosecutor abandoned a closely watched case Thursday against four activists who protested outside a federal building during last year's immigration crackdown in the city, after a judge scrutinized allegations of grand jury misconduct by the prosecutor's office.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros announced the decision to dismiss the remaining charges in court following a closed-door meeting over redacted grand jury transcripts. He told U.S. District Judge April Perry he was unaware until recently of the alleged misconduct, including a prosecutor meeting with a grand juror outside proceedings and other jurors who disagreed with the case being dismissed prevented from participating. Boutros did not dispute the allegations, saying the conduct was upsetting and the reason the case was being dismissed.

"No one acted with the intent to mislead your honor, and I think that they were following your order to give the law,” Boutros said.

Boutros, who was appointed by the Trump administration last year, declined to comment further Thursday through a spokesman.

The case, slated to go to trial next week, is among the most high-profile cases out of the crackdown that rippled across the nation’s third-largest city and suburbs last year. It is also the latest example of how the Justice Department has struggled to prosecute people accused of assaulting or hindering federal officers while protesting President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Defense attorneys for the activists, including onetime Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, said they would seek copies of the unredacted transcripts to learn more.

“The revelations of the grand jury misconduct that led to the dismissal of the charges is sadly not surprising,” said Abughazaleh’s defense attorney Josh Herman. “This misguided case should have never been brought against Kat Abughazaleh or any of her co-defendants for exercising their protected First Amendment rights.”

In October, Abughazaleh was among six people initially charged with conspiring to impede an officer, a felony. Prosecutors alleged they surrounded an immigration agent’s van with other protesters at a federal facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, which was central to the Trump administration’s aggressive operation.

Charges were later dropped against two of the people.

Last month, prosecutors scrapped the felony conspiracy charge altogether amid questions about the grand jury transcripts. Prosecutor’s fresh charging documents last month did not detail further allegations against the activists.

Despite objections from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and other news media outlets, Perry closed part of the hearing to the public because of the discussion of grand jury proceedings, which are kept secret.

The others charged were Andre Martin, who was on Abughazaleh’s campaign staff; Oak Park village trustee Brian Straw; and Michael Rabbitt, a Democratic committeeperson. Each faced a single misdemeanor count of forcibly impeding a federal agent.

The charges were dismissed with prejudice on Thursday, preventing them from being refiled. Perry also floated the idea of a separate hearing on possible sanctions for the U.S. Attorney's Office over their actions.

The case is not the first time during the Trump administration that prosecutors have faced scrutiny over their conduct before grand juries.

In November, for instance, a federal judge in Virginia accused the Justice Department of having engaged in a “disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps” in the process of securing an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey.

Those problems, a magistrate judge wrote, include “fundamental misstatements of the law” by a prosecutor to the grand jury that indicted Comey in September, the use of potentially privileged communications during the investigation and unexplained irregularities in the transcript of the grand jury proceedings.

The case was later dismissed after a judge determined that the prosecutor who filed the false statements prosecution was illegally appointed. Comey in April was newly indicted over a social media photo of seashells arranged on a beach that officials said constituted a threat against Trump.

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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.