Transcripts Show Apparent Misconduct by Federal Prosecutors (1)

A Chicago federal prosecutor walked into a grand jury room last fall with apparent confidence, telling grand jurors she was sure they had enough to indict anti-ICE protesters accused of blocking a federal agent’s vehicle.

“I know you and I trust you and you know me and you trust me,” Assistant US Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg told the grand jury Oct. 9, according to transcripts unsealed Tuesday. “And I would never ask you to charge somebody if I didn’t think there was probable cause.”

District Judge April Perry would later describe those statements as vouching—improperly assuring grand jurors about the strength of the case. Those assurances, along with other irregularities including Mecklenburg’s abrupt dismissal of a skeptical grand juror and subsequent communications with members of the panel outside the jury room, are detailed in the transcripts, which shed light on proceedings that are normally kept secret.

The apparent misconduct led to the implosion of prosecutors’ case against four Chicago-area anti-ICE protesters and later a wave of criticism against the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois from public officials and former prosecutors.

Mecklenburg and her colleague, the transcripts show, were repeatedly met with skepticism from grand jurors—one of whom called the case a “crock of shit” and was excused from the room—before securing an indictment the third time they presented the case.

Perry summarized the apparent misconduct from the bench last month, but the full details hadn’t been publicly available until she released the transcripts.

Prosecutors dropped all charges against the protesters last month following Perry’s scathing review of the transcripts, and the case has sparked a crisis for the Chicago US Attorney’s Office.

In the continuing fallout, more than 100 former Northern District of Illinois prosecutors issued a public statement criticizing the leadership of US Attorney Andrew Boutros. Multiple public officials have called for Boutros to resign. Blanche last week released a statement of support. Mecklenburg’s detail to the Senate Judiciary Committee was terminated in the wake of the allegations.

Three Tries

Prosecutors first presented the case against six protesters Oct. 9, accusing them of blocking an agent from driving toward an ICE facility in suburban Chicago. Mecklenburg greeted grand jurors with, “I know you and I trust you,” then urged them to put aside their personal feelings and politics, the transcripts show.

After prosecutors presented evidence, the grand jury declined to return an indictment.

So Mecklenburg and her colleague, Matthew Skiba, a relatively new prosecutor, returned a week later.

“Between the questions and not getting an indictment, I did not do my job. I did not explain it to you well enough,” Mecklenburg said.

One grand juror asked if they were presenting “any new actual facts or just a different viewpoint on your side?”

When Mecklenburg asked if the grand juror would be able to hear evidence with an open mind, the answer was no: “I heard this case like last week and I thought it was a crock of shit then and I still think it is.”

Mecklenburg dismissed the juror, and a short while later, another said, “I don’t think I can vote,” and was apparently also excused. Testimony later “abruptly stopped,” according to the transcript.

In court last month, Boutros said he’d called off the Oct. 16 session once he learned those jurors were excused and later circulated guidance on how prosecutors are to handle “grand jurors who don’t want to deliberate or if there is tension in the grand jury.”

Boutros recently revealed in an extraordinary statement that he addressed grand jurors himself on Oct. 23 to ask whether they could set aside personal feelings when considering cases.

Mecklenburg returned to the grand jury that day with a mea culpa, telling grand jurors she’d spoken to two of them outside the grand jury room and describing those interactions.

The panel then heard a third presentation of evidence and returned an indictment.

In court last month, Boutros said he learned of the vouching and the side conversations in late April, at which point he decided to drop the felony conspiracy charge against the four remaining defendants. All charges against two of the six original defendants had been dropped earlier.

Days before the scheduled trial on misdemeanor charges, Perry reviewed the complete grand jury transcripts for the first time.

At a hearing May 21, she described apparent misconduct before the grand jury, saying her trust had been broken after prosecutors shielded proof of their actions from the transcripts they initially provided her.

Boutros appeared in court to dismiss the charges. His office said in a statement to Bloomberg Law that after Perry’s remarks, “it was time to forego the case in its entirety and bring the matter to a conclusive end, even though as U.S. Attorney said on the record, he believed that a crime had been committed and as such, that the jury—or the judge, if the court so elected before or after instructing the jury—should have decided the merits of the case.”

The case is United States v. Rabbitt, N.D. Ill., No. 1:25-cr-00693, grand jury transcripts released 6/9/26.