AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

“I have read hundreds — if not thousands — of grand jury transcripts … I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.” Those are the words of a federal judge in Illinois, April Perry, who presided over a closely watched case involving six immigrant rights protesters indicted on federal conspiracy charges for protesting outside the Broadview ICE jail in Chicago last year. The defendants became known as the Broadview 6, though most didn’t know each other before.

During a recent court hearing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office admitted federal prosecutors committed misconduct during the grand jury proceedings. And in a stunning move, the U.S. Attorney’s Office dismissed the charges against the four who had been indicted. On Tuesday, Democratic Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth called for the resignation of the interim U.S. attorney in Chicago, Andrew Boutros, saying his office was, quote, “riddled with chaos, deep internal dysfunction, and alleged misconduct,” unquote. Also Tuesday, Boutros acknowledged he took the highly unusual step of personally addressing the grand jury before they voted on the indictments in the Broadview case. He did this after a previous grand jury declined to indict any of the activists. Separately, Judge Perry has suggested Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg committed prosecutorial misconduct in the case and that the U.S. Attorney’s Office made an effort to cover it up. The case of the Broadview 6 is raising new questions about how the Department of Justice is using the grand jury system in political prosecutions.

Later in the show, we’ll be joined by two of the Broadview 6 to talk about how these charges and convictions affected their lives. But first we go to Chris Parente, an attorney for Brian Straw, another of the six activists.

Chris, thanks so much for joining us. And especially for a nonlawyer audience around the world, if you can explain exactly who the Broadview 6 are, what happened, how they were charged — no, not on the scene — and take it from there?

CHRISTOPHER PARENTE: Sure, Amy. And thank you for having me on. I appreciate the chance to share this story.

First, the Broadview 6 are exactly six people that we want in our community. They’re people who stood up for those that nobody else at the time was standing up for, people that were being abused by our federal government, and they went out there to peacefully protest the abuses that are now well documented that ICE was doing to our neighbors. And so, they’re people that, you know, I point my children to as these are the people I want you to grow up as, not the DHS agents that are, you know, roving our streets. And for standing up for their neighbors, what did they get? They got targeted by the Trump Department of Justice in yet another political indictment.

And the reason, Amy, that this case is so important, especially now, is because what it shows is how this DOJ has completely corrupted the grand jury process. And that is so important right now, because after all of these political indictments — and the Broadview 6 was one of them, the Comey case is one, Don Lemon case, the Southern Poverty Law case — all of these political indictments, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is out there repeating the same refrain: “Hey, it’s not the DOJ that’s returning these indictments or these arrest warrants. It’s the grand jury. Don’t look at us.” That is such a disingenuous statement, when what these federal prosecutors are doing behind closed doors in secret is completely corrupting the grand jury process.

So, your listeners need to know that in the grand jury, there’s no defense attorney, and there’s no judge. It is a sacred place that is built on the trust of the federal prosecutors who work for the DOJ that go in there. You have to believe that they are going to do the right thing. And what we saw here in this Broadview 6 case is not only did they not do the right thing, they did everything wrong, unethical and against the rules, right? This prosecutor in our case goes in there the first time, presents this case and completely vouches for it, which, again, what vouching is would be if I went to that grand jury and said, “Hey, guys, it’s me, Chris Parente. You know me from other cases. I wouldn’t bring you a bad case. This is a great case.” You can’t do that, right? The federal prosecutor is supposed to objectively present the case, and then the grand jury is supposed to decide: Is there enough here to go forward? So, when you start personally vouching for cases like that, that’s completely inappropriate.

And even with that inappropriate behavior, the grand jury, to their credit, said, “No, this is ridiculous. We are not indicting this case.” That should have been the end of it — but not with this relentless DOJ, where they have these political indictments that they were under pressure to get through. So, they go back. This prosecutor comes back the following week to the same grand jury, re-presents the same case again, and this time, again, to the grand jurors’ credit, they start saying, “This is” — they start speaking out and say, “We don’t want any part of this.” The federal prosecutor then throws these grand jurors out of the grand jury room. Right? I mean, you want to talk about how do you get an indictment through. “Hey, you don’t like this case? Get out of the room. You don’t get to vote.” I mean, completely inappropriate. I was a federal prosecutor for 14 years. I couldn’t even imagine this stuff happening when I was in those grand jury rooms.

That’s not the end of it. They don’t present at that time, either. They come back a third week, before the same grand jury, with the same indictment. The only difference this time is now we just learn for the first time the U.S. attorney himself comes down and appears before this same grand jury, the morning that this indictment is going to be presented for the third time, and he says, “Hey, I’m the U.S. attorney. Is there anybody in this room who has a problem with immigration cases? Raise your hand. We have a special procedure for you.” I mean, when I hear that, first of all, what is this special procedure? Are they going to take them out back and shoot them? I mean, it is bizarre conduct. As someone who’s been a former federal prosecutor, I can’t think of a single time where a U.S. attorney would go and directly address a grand jury. So, to do it for the first time ever on the day that the Broadview 6 indictment was being presented for the third time in front of a grand jury who has already rejected it at least once, and it looks like twice, and to say, “Raise your hand if you have an issue with immigration cases,” what kind of message do you think that the U.S. attorney was sending to those grand jurors? Right?

AMY GOODMAN: So, were some grand jurors thrown out?

CHRISTOPHER PARENTE: Someone from the Trump administration is going to walk into your room and say, “Raise your hand if you have a problem with immigration cases”? I certainly wouldn’t have raised my hand. And I would have voted for whatever they wanted, especially when it has been presented to me for the third time.

So, what this case has shown — to me, it is absolutely frightening — is, one, the relentlessness of this DOJ, that when they decide that they want to get a political indictment through, they will do whatever it takes, even acting in an unethical way to get it done and breaking all of the rules. And, two, when Todd Blanche is out there saying, “Hey, it’s not the DOJ that’s doing this. It’s the grand jury,” that is so disingenuous, because now that we’ve got into those secret rooms — and the American people will, hopefully, at the end of this week get to see those transcripts for themselves — it is horrifying conduct that is taking place. And once you know that that’s what these DOJ attorneys are doing, Mr. Blanche can no longer say, “It’s not us. It’s the grand jury,” because his prosecutors are bulldozing these people and acting in an unethical manner, which completely undermines both the Broadview 6 indictment, which is why they dismissed it, and all these other political indictments.

AMY GOODMAN: There is so much to get to here. As you said, the first time, the same grand jury said, “No, no indictments against this group.” Were then grand jurors dismissed? Was that the point of asking, “Do you have an issue with these immigrant cases?”

CHRISTOPHER PARENTE: No. So, it’s worse than that, Amy. So, when they say no, that’s at the end of the presentation. So, you know, the prosecutor had to go upstairs and tell the U.S. attorney, and I think D.C., “Hey, a grand jury voted no,” which almost never happens, right? Because historically, DOJ only brought righteous indictments or cases that they actually had good evidence for. When they start getting into this world of going after, you know, public figures and political indictments, grand jurors, to their credit, are saying, “No, this isn’t a real case. We’re not going to do this.”

So, they waited a full week, because, you know, the grand jury meets once a week, every Thursday in this case. They waited 'til the next Thursday. They go back in and re-present the case, which, again, is unusual. And during that presentation, grand jurors spoke up, you know, and criticized the case. And instead of dealing with that and engaging in maybe thoughtful debate, the prosecutor threw them out of the grand jury room, which, again, is unheard of, and still couldn't get an indictment. And so, it goes to the following Thursday, that third week, and that’s the time when the U.S. attorney, as he just told us, he appeared before that grand jury in the morning to kind of lecture them on their duties, because God forbid they say no to the U.S. government on a nonsense indictment, and says, “If you have a problem with immigration cases, raise your hand,” which, again, we’re still trying to digest that whole thing. And hopefully, the court will do what is necessary here.

AMY GOODMAN: And in a minute, we’re going to talk with two of the activists. They weren’t indicted — they weren’t arrested even during the protests. And if you can explain, Chris Parente — you’re the attorney for Brian Straw, who also happens to be an attorney, one of the six activists — what actually happened, did they contend, that day?

CHRISTOPHER PARENTE: I mean, all that happened — and again, we would have won this case at trial. That’s the funny thing about this whole thing. We kind of have saved the government time and resources, although not embarrassment, obviously.

But all these people did was stand — they were doing what’s called a Jericho walk, moving, walking back and forth in front of the Broadview facility. And this ICE agent drove his car into them. Right? This is an ICE agent who had lights and sirens on his car, never activated it, just never waited for the Broadview police, who were there and who were separating the crowd for every other car that went through without incident. This ICE agent, with a mentality that I think we’ve seen of other ICE agents in this case — or, in these times, just starts driving through the crowd. So, then they say, “Well, if you’re standing in front of the car as it’s moving towards you, you’re impeding them,” which is, again, completely ridiculous, which is why the grand jury said no multiple times. But the DOJ wouldn’t drop the case.

AMY GOODMAN: OK, so, now tell us what the judge understood. This is a key point. Were there missing pages —

CHRISTOPHER PARENTE: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — highly redacted pages? What was she told?

CHRISTOPHER PARENTE: This is the worst part of the entire thing, in my opinion. Right? This is where the cover-up is worse than the crime. As bad as the misconduct in the grand jury was, for seven months, the U.S. Attorney’s Office here in Chicago completely covered this up and deceived the court. Right?

So, we were fighting for disclosure of these transcripts for months. They opposed it, obviously, knowing how bad it was. Eventually, they agreed to turn over the transcripts just to the court, which is called in camera, so it’s just the judge sees it, no defense attorneys see it, the public doesn’t see it. So, they produce these transcripts to the court, and they make redactions, right? Which, again, is unheard of. You redact things that are going to be in the public docket, like Social Security numbers or birthdates. Things that are going to a judge that she’s going to read in her chambers don’t need to be redacted. But these prosecutors sat in their office at the U.S. Attorney’s Office the night before turning these transcripts over to the judge and literally blacked out all of the misconduct that occurred in the grand jury. And then, when they couldn’t do that, they removed whole pages, sections of the transcript, turned it in to the judge and never told her about the missing pages. So, she reads it and says, “OK, there’s not a lot to see here.”

But we had a sense that there was still something wrong, just based on the way the government was acting, so we continued to push that they turn over the unredacted versions to the court. And the judge said, “Mr. Parente, I’ve read 99% of these transcripts. I don’t know what you think could be in there. There’s only 20 lines here.” And I said, “Judge, the U.S. government could do a lot of damage in just two lines.” And she agreed. So the government was then ordered to produce the unredacted transcripts.

And then, for the first time, the court realized: Oh my god, not only did they redact all this bad stuff, but they withheld entire pages that had all the other bad stuff, including the prosecutor throwing out grand jurors that dissented with the case. So, again, the cover-up by the U.S. Attorney’s Office is even worse than the appalling misconduct that occurred in the grand jury, because, again, as a former federal prosecutor, your job is not to win any case. It’s to do the right thing. And I’ve never seen a case like this, where from the jump they did the wrong thing at every single turn.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Christopher Parente, before we go, while the case has been thrown out, you’re calling for — or is the judge reopening it? Could there be criminal charges brought? You also have, of course, two U.S. senators calling for Andrew Boutros to resign. Can they also be fired?

CHRISTOPHER PARENTE: I mean, lots of things can happen. First, on the Andrew Boutros point, to me, the most offensive thing that Mr. Boutros has done is, immediately after this entire thing blows up and the judge realizes what happened here, he came to court, to his credit, and he dismissed the entire thing. But then he went back to his office and sent an all-office email to all the prosecutors, including the six new ones that he just swore in that morning, calling the three prosecutors who handled this case “courageous,” which to me was offensive, because these are the men that stood in that courtroom for six months and deceived the court and deceived defense counsel, and now their boss is calling them courageous, again, without any investigation of what they knew and when they knew it. To me, that is offensive and is not the actions of a leader that I want in that office.

Also, we are filing what’s called a Hyde Amendment motion. So, when the federal government — and this is rare, thankfully — commits misconduct like they did in this case, you can actually get your attorneys’ fees back, which had been extensive for all six of these individuals. So, we have filed that. And people should, you know, pull that filing, which we filed yesterday, because it lays out a timeline of just how bad this misconduct was and the deception that the U.S. Attorney’s Office engaged in in a public courtroom over the course of six months.

AMY GOODMAN: Christopher Parente, we thank you for being with us, attorney for one of the members of the Broadview 6, also an attorney, Brian Straw.

Coming up, we’ll speak with two other members of the Broadview 6, and what’s happened to their lives with these indictments. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Dear Someone” by Lila Downs, performing in our Democracy Now! studio. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. On Thursday night, I will be speaking at the IFC here in New York at West 4th and 6th Avenue after the screening of Steal This Story, Please!, the new documentary about Democracy Now!, as well as my life as a journalist and the 30 years of independent media, way beyond those 30 years, as well. I also want to say I’ll be there with Carl Deal, who is the director of the film, and the moderator will be the playwright, the actor, the co-host of the podcast Don’t Listen to Us, Kathryn Grody, who’s in one-woman show right now, the podcast with Mandy Patinkin, her partner, and Gideon Grody-Patinkin. So, that’s June 4th at 6:30, the film, and then the Q&A.