A Malicious Chapter
in the History of American Justice
June 21, 2026
By David French
Opinion
Columnist
An unusual tweet caught
my eye last week.
It was from Josh
Gerstein, Politico’s senior legal affairs reporter, and it said this: “NEW:
Trump admin takes rare step to quell controversy over prosecutorial misconduct
in dropped criminal case against Chicago-area anti-ICE protesters. Feds won’t
fight defense demand to pay bill for activists’ legal fees.”
Here’s why it’s so
notable. In our legal system, prosecutors rarely pay a criminal defendant’s
legal fees, even when the government loses its case. Defendants tend to be
reimbursed only when they can prove serious prosecutorial
misconduct. It’s even rarer for prosecutors to agree to pay those fees. Experienced
lawyers will read that tweet and know a single, simple truth.
Something very bad went
down in Illinois.
Why, you might wonder,
would I write about a criminal case in Chicagoland when the world is convulsed
by so many seismic events? Last week alone, Trump capitulated to Iran, the
United States cut some of its defense commitments to Europe, and Ukraine hit Moscow
with what appears to be its largest drone attack of the war.
We’re living in a moment
when every week seems to bring a new development of global importance.
But the Chicago case is indicative of
the fight for justice in the Trump administration. For every high-profile case
that goes to the Supreme Court, there are dozens of other, smaller cases in
federal courts across the country in which the Trump administration lies, bends
the rules, slanders innocent citizens and otherwise abuses the legal system to
persecute its political opponents.
And that brings us to
the story of the Broadview Six.
On Oct. 23, 2025, a
federal grand jury indicted a group of six protesters, including
current and former Democratic public officials, charging them with conspiring
to “injure” a federal officer “in his person or property.” The indictment
claimed that they, among other things, “banged aggressively on the government
vehicle’s side and back windows, hood and other vehicle body parts; crowded
together in the front and side of the government vehicle and pushed against the
vehicle to hinder and impede its movement.”
The indictment also
claims the defendants scratched the word “PIG” on the government vehicle.
The indictment was
important enough that Todd Blanche, then the deputy attorney general, announced the charges,
and they fit perfectly with a MAGA narrative that the real problem on the
streets wasn’t with rogue federal officers but with out-of-control leftist
activists — the all-powerful antifa of right-wing fever dreams.
To put this indictment
in context, it was announced around the same time that the administration
was debating whether to invoke the Insurrection Act to
use the military to crush anti-immigration protests.
In fact, the same day
that Blanche announced the charges, Will Scharf, the White House staff
secretary, wrote his boss, Susie Wiles, the White House chief of
staff, warning against using the Insurrection Act. And it was just a few months
later, in January, that the vice president, JD Vance, urged invoking the
Insurrection Act after federal agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex
Pretti in Minnesota.
But then, in March, the strangest
thing happened in Illinois. The government dismissed its own case.
The government dropped
charges against two of the defendants, and the Broadview Six became the
Broadview Four. The government also dropped the felony charges against the
remaining defendants.
Here’s where things get
really interesting (and a little complicated). As Eric Columbus explained in
an excellent rundown of the case
in Lawfare, the defense attorneys filed a motion asking the court
for permission to see the grand jury transcripts in the case, to make sure that
the grand jury had been properly instructed about the law before it issued its
indictment.
The prosecutors, it
turns out, had already handed the judge a redacted copy of the transcripts. In
other words, they had blacked out key portions of the proceedings. This
prompted the federal judge in the case, April Perry, to require the government
to produce unredacted copies and to require any prosecutor “who participated in
the decision to redact portions of the grand jury transcripts” to appear before
her in person.
The unredacted
transcripts were damning. The judge found that federal prosecutors had behaved
improperly in at least three ways. They’d engaged in the forbidden practice of
“vouching,” in which prosecutors essentially tell grand jurors to trust them,
that the case is stronger than it seems. Vouching implies the existence of
secret proof. But grand juries are supposed to make decisions based on the
evidence put before them, not their personal trust in prosecutors.
Prosecutors had also impermissibly
spoken to grand jurors outside the jury room, an act that could place
additional pressure on grand jurors to yield to the prosecution’s version of
events.
And finally, prosecutors
had dismissed from deliberations those grand jurors who had disagreed with the
government’s case. Once again, the prosecution was improperly placing its thumb
on the scales of justice.
To make matters worse,
prosecutors had redacted all this evidence. There was an obvious cover-up. The
judge declared herself “incredibly shocked” and said that she had “never seen
the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those
transcripts.”
She then said words no
lawyer wants to hear. She raised the possibility of “sanctions for
prosecutorial misconduct and for potential ethical violations, including lack
of candor to the court.”
Moments later, after a
brief recess, the government moved to dismiss the case against the remaining
defendants, with prejudice (meaning that the government can’t charge them again
for the same offense). The court immediately granted the motion — and a malicious
chapter in the history of American justice came to a righteous end.
Don’t think for a moment that the Trump administration’s
corruption and incompetence were confined to that case alone.
The Chicago
Sun-Times maintains a database of
criminal charges related to Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump administration’s
immigration crackdown in Chicago, and it’s astounding. Out of more than 30
cases filed so far, two resulted in guilty pleas, five resulted in deferred
prosecution agreements (slaps on the wrist), and two are still pending.
Twenty-four other cases have failed. Twenty were dismissed. Grand juries
refused to indict in at least three, and one resulted in acquittal.
This is a terrible
record in court, and the facts of the cases are sometimes egregious. In the
most notorious case, a federal agent shot a woman five times, and the
administration publicly accused her of being a domestic terrorist,
then charged her with assault —
only to dismiss the case after
an overwhelming amount of evidence (including body camera footage) contradicted
the government’s account.
The Chicago cases are collapsing just as the federal government is
announcing a new round of
criminal indictments, this time against protesters in Minnesota. Last Tuesday,
for example, the Department of Justice announced that it had charged 15 members
of a group called Direct Action Minnesota with, among other things, assaulting
federal officers, interstate stalking and interstate threats.
We don’t yet know enough
to evaluate those cases, but one thing is clear: The federal government has
lost the benefit of the doubt. Or, as Judge Perry said in Chicago, “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.”
But there is a silver lining in the
dark cloud. In Chicago, the Trump administration has blinked. It’s not just
refusing to contest the payment of attorneys’ fees; U.S. Attorney Andrew
Boutros — the same person who presided over these corrupt prosecutions — has
changed his tune.
In May, he announced a
series of “sweeping reforms” to
his office’s grand jury procedures as part of a “remediation plan” to prevent
future misconduct.
When I’m in my more
optimistic moments, I think we’ll look back at last year as the high-water mark
of Trumpism, when the combination of arrogance after Trump’s victory and the
inherent authoritarianism of the Trumpist project led to a unique period of state
violence and legal corruption.
And now, my optimistic
self says, the justice system is reasserting itself. The combination of
personal courage, legal persistence and judicial independence is preserving due
process and the American system of justice.
But optimism is no cause
for complacency. Federal prosecutors in Illinois may be chastened, but Todd
Blanche, the man who announced the bogus prosecution of the Broadview Six in
the first place, is Trump’s nominee to replace Pam Bondi as the attorney general
of the United States.
If he is confirmed,
expect more vindictive prosecutions. Expect more prosecutorial misconduct. And
expect more federal judges (and more American citizens) to say, along with
Judge Perry in Illinois, that their trust is broken.
Why? Because the Trump administration
is the nation’s chief threat to the rule of law.
