Legal experts say the Justice Department is paying off the "Broadview Six" to kill a probe that could expose Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The Department of Justice entered a court filing Tuesday conceding it will pay the defendants' attorneys' fees — which courts can award when a prosecution was conducted in bad faith — while simultaneously arguing there should be no discovery.
The defendants had demanded records of all communications between Chicago federal prosecutors and Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh or Blanche — including cell phone records tied to Singh — covering the entire Broadview Six investigation, according to a discovery motion filed last month.
Six protesters were indicted last fall outside a Chicago-area Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, according to court records.
The case collapsed in May after U.S. District Judge April Perry of the Northern District of Illinois found that prosecutors had improperly dismissed skeptical grand jurors, vouched for their own evidence, and concealed the misconduct by submitting redacted transcripts to the court.
"Speaking as just one guy who sues the government a lot: This basically does not happen," Nashville civil rights attorney Daniel Horwitz wrote on Bluesky. "It is a transparent effort to shut down further inquiry by conceding relief. What they are seeking to cover up must be unspeakably bad."
"The United States' litigation decision not to challenge the defendant's entitlement to fees... does not concede that the United States has acted or done anything to warrant those fees," the Justice Department insisted in the filing.
"Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is nothing amicable about a settlement after the government tried to railroad a bunch of people by rigging the grand jury," Houston appellate attorney Raffi Melkonian wrote on Bluesky.
"Of course, the Justice Department doesn't want discovery, it will further expose their egregious conduct," criminal defense attorney John Beatty, legal editor at Emptywheel, wrote on Bluesky.
"What we already know is horrific. Imagine how bad discovery would be if the government is willing to pay our fees (something the government doesn't readily do) just to avoid it," Kat Abughazaleh, a former Democratic congressional candidate from Illinois and one of the Broadview Six defendants, posted on Bluesky.