Emeritus Law Professor Michael Tigar, University of Texas, calls USDOJ the "Department that calls itself 'Justice.'" From The New York Times:
DAVID FRENCH
A Malicious Chapter in the History of American Justice
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.
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David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” You can follow him on Threads (@davidfrenchjag).
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