Durbin and Duckworth Demand Chicago U.S. Attorney Resign After He Reveals He Personally Addressed the Grand Jury That Indicted Protesters

The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois is facing a mounting revolt over his handling of a politically charged immigration case, after he acknowledged personally addressing the grand jury that indicted a group of protesters known as the "Broadview Six."

Andrew Boutros, the top federal prosecutor in Chicago, published a "special report" this week containing the transcript of a nearly four-minute speech he delivered to a grand jury last October — the same panel that went on to indict the six defendants later that day. The disclosure, intended to defend his office's conduct, instead handed critics fresh ammunition and intensified questions about whether prosecutors had improperly put a thumb on the scale.

By Tuesday, Illinois' two Democratic senators had seen enough. Dick Durbin, the longtime senator and former Judiciary Committee chairman, and Tammy Duckworth jointly called on Boutros to resign, declaring that his office "has been riddled with chaos, deep internal dysfunction, and alleged misconduct." The pointed statement from two of the state's most prominent officials transformed a simmering legal controversy into a full-blown political crisis for the prosecutor.

The Broadview Six were charged in connection with protests outside a federal immigration facility in suburban Broadview, where demonstrators had repeatedly clashed with agents amid the Trump administration's intensified deportation push. The cases against them have since collapsed, and the defendants are now demanding that the Department of Justice pay their attorneys' fees. In a filing Tuesday afternoon, the cleared defendants alleged "wide-ranging misconduct" by prosecutors and argued that taxpayers should not have to bear the cost of defending against charges they say should never have been brought.

A judge overseeing related matters had previously admonished prosecutors for what was described as grandstanding, adding judicial weight to the perception that the office had overreached in pursuing demonstrators. Boutros' decision to release his own remarks to the grand jury — an unusual step, given the traditional secrecy surrounding grand jury proceedings — appears to have backfired, drawing scrutiny to the very conduct he sought to justify.

The standoff places the Justice Department in an uncomfortable position, pitting a sitting U.S. attorney against the home-state senators who ordinarily play a role in vetting such appointments. Boutros has not announced any intention to step down, and the department has not said whether it will contest the defendants' request for legal fees. But with the Broadview cases unraveling and calls for his resignation now coming from the Senate, the embattled prosecutor confronts a reckoning over how his office wielded the power of a federal indictment against participants in an immigration protest.