President Donald Trump has the power to stop any criminal contempt case against Chicago federal prosecutors, the Justice Department warned a judge as it refused to cooperate with her investigation into possible criminal misconduct.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr., a former personal lawyer to Trump allies, made the argument in a court filing on Friday, the deadline U.S. District Judge April Perry had set for the government to turn over records for her inquiry.
Woodward, the department’s third-ranking official, filed a sudden notice of appearance in the case Friday, court records show.
Earlier that day, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Diane MacArthur and Nathaniel Whalen, who had represented U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros’ office in the case, each asked to withdraw, saying only that they were “no longer assigned to this case.”
Perry is weighing whether to name a special prosecutor to investigate Boutros and others over a case against six people charged after a September 2025 protest during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
The case collapsed in May after Perry uncovered apparent misconduct before the grand jury, the newspaper reported.
Woodward’s filing rejected the agreement Perry’s request was built on. Her Oct. 9 order began, “Consistent with the Government’s agreement,” and asked for the office’s communications with anyone outside it about charging decisions.
“For the avoidance of doubt, the United States has not agreed to provide any information,” Woodward wrote, disowning an agreement Perry said the government had made with her.
The filing said the Justice Department's lawyer at an Oct. 1 hearing, pressed repeatedly on whether the department would “cooperate,” had made clear that “there’s a limitation in terms of what [he could] answer.”
“To be clear, the United States does not read the Court’s October 9 minute entry as a directive creating any obligation to produce any information,” Woodward wrote. “Rather, the United States reads the minute entry as inviting voluntary cooperation with a judicial investigation, as it uses the terms ‘ask’ and ‘request[].’”
If Perry meant her request as an order, Woodward wrote, she should issue an amended one, though the department believes “further proceedings would not be appropriate.”
Woodward also argued that Perry has not given the department concrete notice of what misconduct she is investigating.
The filing quoted Perry warning at the Oct. 1 hearing that the questions could affect “the individual law licenses of the [assistant U.S. attorneys] who have been implicated, but also the possibility of a criminal prosecution.”
It also quoted her suggesting “that people at a high level in the Department of Justice were involved in things that could constitute obstruction of justice.”
“These vague but serious threats do not sufficiently place the United States on notice of the concrete factual basis for the Court’s investigation,” Woodward wrote.
The filing pointed to a March statement Perry had questioned, in which prosecutors told her there were “no communications of any nature” with anyone outside the office about charging decisions, including “anyone in the White House and all components and offices of Main Justice,” meaning Justice Department headquarters.
At the Oct. 1 hearing, Whalen acknowledged that such communications might exist but said they came after the decision to file charges, the Sun-Times reported.
Woodward argued that the executive branch, which Trump leads, must control any prosecution of the department’s lawyers.
Federal rules let a judge appoint “another attorney” to prosecute contempt, the crime of defying or obstructing a court, when the government declines. Woodward wrote that doing so “would violate Article II,” the part of the Constitution giving the president executive power, when the target is an executive official.
“Like other criminal prosecutions, … a prosecution for contempt must be supervised by the Executive Branch,” he wrote.
“It is likewise well-established that the pardon power extends to criminal contempt,” Woodward wrote. “Allowing a court-appointed attorney to prosecute criminal contempt without executive supervision would thus infringe the President’s ‘indubitable’ power under the Pardon Clause to ‘direct that the criminal be prosecuted no further.’”
Under that argument, the president could halt any “criminal prosecution” of the department’s lawyers, the possibility Perry raised Oct. 1.
The filing points to a 2013 opinion on presidential pardons by Brett Kavanaugh, then an appeals judge and now a Supreme Court justice.
If the attorney general were unavailable to supervise such a prosecutor, the filing said, the job would pass to the deputy attorney general and then to the associate attorney general, Woodward’s own post.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) opposed Woodward’s nomination in an October 2025 Senate floor speech, warning that Republicans had opened the door to “extreme nominees” who are “blindly loyal to President Trump.”
“Mr. Woodward is not even close to qualified,” Durbin said. “He has never, never worked at the Justice Department before this Administration. What he has done is show his loyalty to Donald Trump by representing Trump associates for their roles in thwarting investigations into the President.”
Perry’s Oct. 1 order appointed University of Chicago law professor William Baude to argue against the department’s position on whether she can name a prosecutor to pursue criminal contempt, with his brief due Dec. 2.
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