Broadview 6 hearing set to rock Chicago federal courthouse, but DOJ official could intervene

The stage is set for a historic showdown inside Chicago’s federal courthouse, where a judge has ordered the city’s top federal prosecutor to testify — and made clear she doesn’t believe what he’s told her about the disastrous “Broadview Six” scandal.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros is due on the witness stand later this month. So are three prosecutors from his office. Sanctions and criminal contempt charges loom. And finger-pointing has already begun over the failed 2025 prosecution of six Midway Blitz protesters.

U.S. District Judge April Perry’s hearing could take the Dirksen Federal Courthouse deep into uncharted waters — if it goes down. That remains to be seen, thanks in large part to a new character in the case: Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward.

Woodward is the Justice Department’s third-highest ranking official. He’s increasingly at the center of Justice Department controversies, and he appears to have taken the wheel in the Broadview Six litigation. He publicly inserted himself into the case Oct. 30.

Woodward is expected to challenge Perry and try to short-circuit her hearing, which she’s said will take place by Nov. 24. No such challenge has surfaced yet, though, and the Justice Department has declined to comment.

The day Woodward entered the Broadview Six case, Woodward also faced off with U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington. The pair tangled over a golf course President Donald Trump has sought to renovate in the nation’s capital, in an exchange that seemed to solidify Woodward’s defiant reputation.

The exasperated Reyes told Woodward early on, “let’s not play games anymore,” according to a transcript of the hearing.

That did little to bring the temperature down.

U.S. Senate

They parried over “word games” and social media posts. At one point, the judge accused Woodward of trying to take back an argument he’d made.

“Here’s the thing,” she told Woodward, “you just said it. There’s literally a transcript of it. Now, if you want to correct yourself and say ‘gosh, that’s not what I meant,’ by all means.”

“Gosh, that’s not what I meant,” Woodward replied.

Later, the judge asked Woodward about the golf course itself. She told him, “you’re the one who’s a golfer, not me.”

“I have golfed,” Woodward replied. “I would not describe myself as a golfer.”

Particularly frustrating to the judge, it seemed, was Woodward’s refusal to interpret Truth Social messages from Trump.

“We’re not on TV,” Woodward told her. “I mean, I’m not a pundit opining about the president’s words.

“As you’ve reminded me multiple times, I’m the No. 3 ranking official at the Department of Justice.”

And now, Woodward’s at the center of the “Broadview Six” case.

What does Judge Perry want to know?

Perry made her purpose clear during a hearing Oct. 1: “My sole focus, at this point, is on lack of candor, concealment of material facts, or other misconduct that occurred before me.”

In other words, she wants to know whether she was lied to during the Broadview Six prosecution.

The case revolved around a protest outside an immigration holding facility in west suburban Broadview in September 2025. Prosecutors alleged that a crowd pushed and damaged a federal agent’s SUV.

But from that crowd, only six people were charged with a conspiracy to impede the agent. Most of them were involved in local Democratic politics, raising questions about selective prosecution.

The case collapsed after Perry discovered apparent misconduct by Boutros’ staff while they sought an indictment against the group from a grand jury. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg allegedly spoke to grand jurors outside the grand jury room, for example.

While the initial controversy revolved around Mecklenburg’s alleged misconduct, Perry has since turned her attention to the accuracy of two claims made by the feds last spring.

The first revolved around whether the White House played any role in the case. Boutros’ team told Perry in March there were “no communications of any nature from, to, or with anyone outside [the U.S. attorney’s office] (other than the local FBI investigators assigned to the case) regarding any investigatory or charging decisions.

“To be crystal clear, this specifically includes anyone in the White House” or at Justice Department headquarters in Washington, prosecutors wrote.

That claim has been undermined by a recent lawsuit brought against Boutros by former Chicago FBI boss Douglas DePodesta.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

It alleges that Boutros met in DePodesta’s office Oct. 7, 2025, with then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald. Blanche is now the attorney general.

“During this meeting, Defendant Boutros discussed the Broadview Six investigation with his superiors in the Department of Justice and other law enforcement officers,” DePodesta’s attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.

That meeting would have happened two days before Boutros’ office first tried to secure an indictment against the Broadview Six.

The judge has also zeroed in on Boutros’ claim that he learned of alleged wrongdoing by Mecklenburg in late April. He’s since acknowledged receiving a transcript in October 2025 that documented some of her alleged misconduct.

Boutros said he didn’t remember reading it.

But grand jurors initially rejected the Broadview Six case. The feds went back to the panel twice, records show. And Perry pointed out that “Boutros himself had to approve the re-presentment of the case to the grand jury.”

“The idea that [U.S. Attorney] Boutros would have made such a significant decision without reviewing the best evidence available to him about what went wrong in the grand jury is nearly unfathomable,” Perry wrote.

Who is Stanley Woodward?

Woodward entered the Broadview Six case fresh off his showdown with Judge Reyes in Washington. But he’s been at the center of other recent Justice Department controversies. 

In May, Woodward signed the settlement agreement between the president and the IRS that established the controversial “anti-weaponization fund” for people claiming to be harmed by “lawfare” and the weaponization of the justice system.

He signed that deal three days before the Broadview Six case collapsed. Members of the group actually once mused about applying to the fund — but Blanche later issued an order insisting the fund was rescinded “beyond any doubt.”

Woodward’s name also appears at the top of the Justice Department’s Oct. 22 lawsuit over an entry into the Alaska Senate race by a candidate with a similar name to Sen. Dan Sullivan. That lawsuit has already been tossed by a judge, though the Justice Department has filed an appeal.

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In addition to his battles with Judge Reyes, Woodward has also moved to disqualify judges in Minnesota. He alleged one made “unethical” comments to The New York Times about the Trump administration’s deportation efforts.

“The American people will undoubtedly question” whether the judge can be impartial, Woodward wrote.

Finally, upon entering Chicago’s Broadview Six case, Woodward told Judge Perry she should clarify whether a previous “request” she’d made for records was really meant to be a “directive.”

But “for the avoidance of doubt,” he wrote, “the United States has not agreed to provide any information.”

And, he made clear, “the United States believes further proceedings would not be appropriate.”

What will happen at the hearing?

There’s no obvious playbook for Perry’s hearing. So attorneys have already begun to question how it would go forward.

In addition to Boutros, Perry ordered three rank-and-file prosecutors who worked the Broadview Six case to take the stand: William Hogan, Matthew Skiba and Andres Almendarez.

Their attorneys declined to comment beyond briefs filed in court.

In her order Monday, Perry said testimony will revolve around grand jury transcripts in the case, the accuracy of statements made to her by the feds, and “prosecutors’ repeated failures to correct the court’s stated misconceptions about the aforementioned matters.”

Sen. Dick Durbin/YouTube

She also invited “any former or current employee of the U.S. attorney’s office or federal law enforcement agency who has first-hand knowledge about the above events” to testify.

That’s been taken as a likely reference to DePodesta or Mecklenburg. DePodesta attorney Ron Safer told the Chicag oSun-Times that his client’s information is likely “tangential” to Perry's investigation. Mecklenburg’s attorney declined to comment.

Hogan attorney Shelly Kulwin raised questions in a filing this week about who will be questioning the prosecutors and whether cross-examination will be allowed. Kulwin also asked whether he’ll be allowed to present his own evidence.

In an order responding to Kulwin on Friday, Perry said, “Each witness will be asked to speak about the issues” raised in her Monday order “of which they have personal knowledge.”

Perry wrote that she “will ask follow-up questions, if necessary. No cross-examination by other witnesses or their attorneys will be permitted.”

No other witnesses may be called, she wrote, beyond the invitation she’d already extended.

Finally, she said she’d eventually be willing to hear evidence in favor of certain individuals, if at a later point, she “determine[s] that court-imposed sanctions are likely.”