2026-06-24T10:00:26.084Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/24/politics/chicago-us-attorney-boutros-grand-jury-issues
美国芝加哥检察官办公室正陷入严重危机，近期大陪审团陈述环节出现问题，导致三起刑事案件被撤销。
近日曝出的问题已促使特朗普任命并获法官支持的伊利诺伊州北区美国检察官安德鲁·布特罗斯，对100多份机密大陪审团会议笔录展开自行审查，重点关注去年提起公诉的案件。
布特罗斯表示，他决定撤销这三起刑事案件——分别涉及新冠疫情诈骗、陈年纵火案以及一起针对美国移民海关执法局抗议者的涉政治案件——是因为一名低级检察官在这些案件中的工作失当。
布特罗斯在周一提交的法庭文件中称，他计划审查该检察官在大陪审团面前经手的近20年案件，检查是否存在其他不公平的大陪审团陈述行为。检察官会在秘密程序中向大陪审团出示证据，由大陪审员决定是否起诉。
布特罗斯的检察官办公室表示，如果发现其他检察官“在大陪审团环节违规行为发生率极高”，可能会对其工作展开审查。
布特罗斯还表示，此举旨在重塑司法部与伊利诺伊州北区联邦法官之间已受损的信任。
然而，布特罗斯和司法部仍可能面临长达数月的内部和外部审查，包括芝加哥法官发起的审查。与此同时，司法部的政治领导层正受到全国各法院和国会山议员的密切关注。与此同时，检察官办公室和其他司法部分支机构一直在努力安抚白宫，因为白宫要求提起更多刑事诉讼并采取激进执法措施，包括针对总统政治对手的案件。
检察官办公室最近撤销的一起案件涉及四名被告，他们被调查多年后，于去年最终因2018年一起超市纵火案面临指控。检察官指控该团伙犯有纵火罪。
根据法庭记录，去年7月，一名名为谢里·梅克伦堡的检察官在大陪审团面前就被告和案件举证发表了不当言论。布特罗斯还表示，有录音显示她在大陪审团房间内没有法庭记录员在场的情况下与大陪审员讨论此案。
大陪审团于2025年9月批准了起诉。
“美国检察官及其办公室绝不宽恕大陪审团陈述环节出现的这些违规行为，此类行为在任何情况下都不应发生，”布特罗斯在给纵火案联邦法官的信中写道。
目前代表梅克伦堡的律师拒绝置评，法官和司法部官员尚未完全确定其失职行为的具体情况。
但美国检察官办公室和芝加哥联邦地区法院透露，梅克伦堡在另一起更受关注的“布罗德韦尔六人案”中也发表了不当言论，该案去年针对的是民主党活动人士。
在该案中，司法部试图起诉六名民主党政客和活动人士，他们在芝加哥附近的一座联邦移民拘留中心外举行抗议。大陪审团最终于秋季批准起诉被告，但最近几周，一名法官以梅克伦堡在大陪审团面前的言论存在严重问题为由驳回了此案。
“最初看似仅与高关注度案件相关的异常情况，如今似乎已成为一种 recurring practice，甚至波及普通的联邦公诉案件，”纵火案辩护律师上周致法官的信中写道。
法官罗伯特·盖特曼周一驳回了纵火案，并禁止司法部未来再次就该案提起指控。
梅克伦堡于2月退出了其在芝加哥负责的案件，但她仍受雇于司法部。她在该办公室工作了约20年，经手数百起案件。
芝加哥检察官办公室撤销的另一起案件是梅克伦堡多年来负责的一起案件，指控一家医院在新冠疫情期间存在诈骗行为。
这一事件仍笼罩着布特罗斯的任期，尤其是在特朗普政府在芝加哥大力推行反移民政策之际，而公开支持布特罗斯的托德·布兰奇正等待其成为司法部长的确认听证会。
针对一群民主党活动人士的案件辩护律师上周告诉法官，检方可能试图将所有罪责都推给梅克伦堡。
他们指控检察官办公室的其他人员在最近几周试图掩盖大陪审团环节的不当行为，在法院首次查阅大陪审团笔录时进行了大量删改。辩护律师还暗示，芝加哥办公室与布兰奇团队的互动可能是最初提起该案的原因，该案指控抗议联邦移民拘留设施的团体妨碍执法。
辩护团队已要求伊利诺伊州北区初审法院的联邦法官阿普丽尔·佩里任命一名外部调查员，审查司法部在该案中的工作。
“确实，必须采取这些措施，很大程度上是因为目前已知的不当行为——尤其是在本案中——似乎有着更深的根源，甚至波及芝加哥美国检察官办公室的最高层，很可能也波及华盛顿的司法部，”“布罗德韦尔六人案”的辩护律师表示。“如果不在此案中任命特别检察官，将纵容政府将所有问题归咎于单个替罪羊的策略，对于那些急于翻篇的人来说，这是一个方便的结果。”
佩里上月驳回了“布罗德韦尔六人案”的所有指控，目前尚未就后续程序作出决定。目前尚不清楚在案件被驳回后，她是否有权进一步调查司法部的行为。近几个月来，其他试图深入调查司法部内部案件处理情况的法官都遭到了特朗普政府的阻挠。
本月的风波中，一大群来自芝加哥检察官办公室的知名前职员联名发表信件，谴责布特罗斯的做法以及自2025年春季以来政治因素对检察官决策的渗透。
该团体表示，他们尤其对大陪审团环节的违规行为感到担忧；芝加哥联邦检察官提起的案件在法庭上被驳回的情况增多；以及该办公室人才大量流失。
“过去一年里领导层采取的行动玷污了伊利诺伊州北区美国检察官办公室的声誉，而我们中的每个人都曾在该办公室担任过联邦检察官，”这支由100多名律师组成的团体写道。“这些事件引发了疑问：我们曾 deeply respect的这个办公室是否存在领导力缺失，以及曾经被禁止的政治考量是否正在影响公诉决策。我们认为，这两个问题的答案都是肯定的。”
布特罗斯公开回应称，他的办公室今年提起的起诉数量有所增加。他在社交媒体帖子中表示，去年4月上任时，他“发现这个办公室状况不佳”。
“我们对该办公室几乎各个方面开展了前所未有的根本原因分析，在过去一年里整顿了局面，”布特罗斯补充道。“我们释放了曾经被压制、扼杀和阻碍的能量与人才。”
Chicago US attorney’s office drops three cases amid turmoil over improper grand jury presentations
2026-06-24T10:00:26.084Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/24/politics/chicago-us-attorney-boutros-grand-jury-issues
The US attorney’s office in Chicago is in a five-alarm fire after problems with recent grand jury presentations resulted in three dropped criminal cases.
The recently discovered problems have prompted Andrew Boutros, the Trump-appointed and judge-endorsed US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, to do his own review of more than 100 transcripts of confidential grand jury sessions, putting a close eye on cases that have been charged in the last year.
Boutros said he decided to drop the criminal cases — which alleged covid fraud, years old arson, and a politically-charged cases against ICE protestors — because of one lower-level prosecutor’s work on them.
Boutros said in a court filing on Monday that he planned to review nearly 20 years of cases the prosecutor worked on before grand juries, checking whether there had been other unfair grand jury presentations. Prosecutors present evidence to grand juries in secret proceedings before the grand jurors decide whether to indict.
Boutros’ US attorney’s office may review other prosecutors’ work, he said in the court filing, if the office finds others “having a high error rate of irregularities in the grand jury.”
The effort is aimed at shoring up trust that the Justice Department has lost with federal judges in the Northern District of Illinois, Boutros also said.
Yet Boutros and the Justice Department are still potentially facing months of internal and external reviews, including from judges in Chicago — all while the department’s political leadership is being closely watched in courts across the country and by lawmakers on Capitol Hill. At the same time, the US attorney’s office and other Justice Department outposts have struggled to appease the White House as it seeks more charged criminal cases and aggressive law enforcement, including cases being brought against political foes of the president.
The most recent case the US attorney’s office dropped was against four defendants who had been investigated for years until finally facing charges last year for a supermarket fire in 2018. Prosecutors accused the group of arson.
One prosecutor, Sheri Mecklenburg, allegedly made improper statements to the grand jury about the defendants and about proving the case in July last year, according to the court record. A recording captured her speaking to a grand juror about the case without a court reporter present in the grand jury room, Boutros also said.
The grand jury approved the indictment in September 2025.
“The U.S. Attorney and the U.S. Attorney’s Office do not condone those irregularities in the grand jury presentations, which should not have happened under any circumstances,” Boutros wrote to a federal judge in the arson case.
An attorney now representing Mecklenburg declined to comment, and judges and Justice Department authorities haven’t yet fully determined the missteps.
But Mecklenburg also made problematic comments to another grand jury, in the more high-profile Broadview Six case against Democratic activists last year, the US attorney’s office and the Chicago federal district court have said.
In that case, the Justice Department sought to bring a case against six democratic politicians and activists who protested outside a federal immigration detention center near Chicago. A grand jury eventually indicted the defendants in the fall, but in recent weeks a judge dismissed the case after finding significant problems in what Mecklenburg said to the grand jury.
“What initially appeared to be an aberration tied to high-profile cases appears to have been a recurring practice that infects even garden-variety federal prosecutions,” defense lawyers in the arson case wrote to the judge last week.
Judge Robert Gettleman dismissed the arson case on Monday and barred the Justice Department from attempting to charge it again in the future.
Mecklenburg exited her Chicago cases in February but she is still employed by the Justice Department. She had worked on hundreds of cases over about 20 years in the office.
The other case the Chicago US attorney’s office has dismissed was one Mecklenburg had worked on for years, alleging fraud during the covid pandemic at a hospital.
The situation still hangs over Boutros’ tenure, especially at a time where the Trump administration has been aggressive with its enforcement of anti-immigration policies in Chicago, and Todd Blanche, who has publicly backed Boutros from Washington, awaits his confirmation hearings to become Attorney General.
Defense attorneys in the case against a group of Democratic activists told a judge last week the office may be trying to pin all blame on Mecklenburg.
They accused others in the US attorney’s office tried to cover up the misconduct before the grand jury in recent weeks, by heavily redacting grand jury transcripts when the court first read them. And the defense lawyers are still suggesting interactions between the Chicago office and Blanche’s team may have prompted the case being charged in the first place, which accused the group that was protesting a federal immigration detention facility of hampering authorities.
The defense team has asked federal Judge April Perry, of the Northern District of Illinois’ trial-level court, to appoint an outside investigator to examine the Justice Department’s work on the case.
“Indeed, these steps must be taken in large part because of what appears to be a determined effort to blame a single prosecutor when the misconduct now known — particularly in this case — runs much deeper and indeed to the highest levels of the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office and likely to the Department of Justice in Washington D.C.,” the attorneys for the Broadview Six said. “To not appoint a special prosecutor here would enable the government’s strategy to lay all that has happened on a single scapegoat, a convenient outcome for those who are eager to turn the page.”
Perry hasn’t decided on further proceedings since she dismissed all Broadview Six charges last month. It is unclear the power she may have to look further at the Justice Department’s actions, now that the case is dismissed. Other judges in recent months who have wanted to dig into Justice Department internal handling of cases have faced resistance from the Trump administration.
Amid the fallout this month, a large group of prominent alumni from the Chicago US attorney’s office signed onto a letter condemning Boutros’ approach and the infiltration of politics into prosecutors’ decision-making since spring 2025.
The group said they were especially concerned with grand jury irregularities; Chicago federal prosecutors attempting to charge cases that ended in the cases being rejected in court; and an exodus of talented attorneys from the office.
“Actions taken by leadership in the last year have tarnished the reputation of the United Statements Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, where each of us once served as an AUSA,” the group of more than 100 lawyers wrote. “These matters raise questions about whether there is a failure of leadership in the office we deeply respect and whether once-forbidden political considerations are infecting prosecutorial decisions. The answer to both questions, in our view, is yes.”
Boutros responded publicly by touting an increase in indictments his office has brought this year. He said in a social media post that when he took the job last April, he “found an office that was not well.”
“Having conducted an unprecedented root-cause analysis of nearly every facet of the Office, we’ve spent the last year righting the ship,” Boutros added. “We’ve unleashed energy and talent that once was suppressed, stifled, and stymied.”