CHICAGO — In a move that legal experts describe as highly unusual, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros has issued a “special report” concerning his interactions with the grand jury that indicted six protesters during Operation Midway Blitz. This report comes amid growing public calls for Boutros to step down from his position.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like this—a special report detailing atypical grand jury proceedings,” remarked ABC7’s Chief Legal Analyst, Gil Soffer.
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Soffer explained to the I-Team that such a report from the U.S. Attorney’s Office is unprecedented, as is the notion of a U.S. Attorney addressing a grand jury after it has already reviewed a case.
“It’s not inherently illegal or against the rules,” Soffer noted. “It’s just something that doesn’t typically happen.”
Prosecutors initially failed to secure an indictment against the six protesters, who include several progressive politicians. These individuals were accused of interfering with immigration enforcement operations outside the Broadview ICE processing facility.
According to selected excerpts from the grand jury proceedings released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Boutros made a third appearance before the grand jury considering the case.
Boutros claims he only advised grand jurors on their constitutional role, and that he planned to address more grand juries in the Northern District.
However, in the excerpts, Boutros asked grand jurors to identify themselves if they could not be impartial, multiple times about immigration and another time about child exploitation.
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“It’s a question mark. Why was there a return of a true bill on the last day? Why wasn’t there on the first day? Had there been a selecting or weeding out of grand jurors who had expressed strong opposition from the earlier sessions? The only thing we know for certain, to borrow the language of this special report, is that it’s all extraordinary, all rare, all highly unusual,” said Soffer.
The day Boutros addressed the grand jury, prosecutors secured their indictment.
“I don’t think it is typical to ask jurors in advance of a case how they feel about the subject matter in question. In any given case, you present the evidence, you lay out the facts, you lay out the law, and you present an indictment for approval or no true bill,” said Soffer.
The U.S. Attorney’s office also says “extraordinary measures may be required to restore the rule of law” when grand juries don’t do their jobs.
“What does that mean? What are these extraordinary measures, and are they coming down the pike, and will we be expecting to see them? That’s a very important question that this document does not answer,” Soffer told the I-Team.
Boutros said in the report that he only appeared in front of the grand jury after informing Chief Judge Virginia Kendall. Defense attorneys filed motions Tuesday requesting attorneys’ fees in the case claiming the U.S. Attorney’s Office conducted a cover-up of their misconduct.
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