A federal judge thwarted the Justice Department’s bid to hide details of an internal probe into alleged prosecutor misconduct, including the name of one of its own lawyers.
U.S. District Judge April Perry on Friday denied the government’s request to seal its petition about the investigation and ordered the full document made public, according to court records. Perry has also ordered an investigation that she said could lead to criminal charges over the same misconduct allegations.
The unsealed petition confirms that the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating prosecutors who handled the “Broadview Six” case, the collapsed prosecution of six people charged after an immigration protest near Chicago.
Prosecutors in U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros’ office, which brought the case, had filed a redacted version overnight that blacked out a second government lawyer’s signature block, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
The blacked-out passages also covered the filing’s references to the misconduct investigation, including an entire section titled “OPR’s Review,” the public version shows.
“wtf?” legal journalist Roger Parloff wrote on X, responding to Sun-Times reporter Jon Seidel’s post about the redactions.
“I can’t recall ever seeing a pleading like this where the government tried to hide the names of its lawyers. It’s the prosecutorial equivalent of ICE agents wearing masks,” former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance wrote on X.
Perry rejected the request in her order, writing that transcripts from the grand jury, the panel that approves criminal charges, had already been made public “without any opposition from the Government.”
“The Government has also publicly disclosed - in both court filings and open court - the fact that there is an OPR investigation in this case involving the prosecutors who were in the grand jury,” Perry wrote, noting that the government had sought to seal a section setting out “basic principles of law,” along with an attorney’s signature block.
“There is a presumption that materials that underpin a judicial decision are open to public inspection unless they meet very specific criteria,” Perry wrote. “No such criteria are present here.”
“And now Judge Perry has ordered the full filing by the US attorney’s office to be unsealed, saying there is no basis to redact a signing attorney’s name,” Chicago Tribune reporter Jason Meisner wrote on X. “This could get interesting...”
Meisner identified the attorney as "Suzanne Drouet, a deputy in the Office of Professional Responsibility."
The petition asks Perry to release unredacted grand jury transcripts to lawyers for two prosecutors under investigation. Perry granted that request Thursday, noting in a brief order that the transcripts were already public in nearly unredacted form.
“OPR has a particular need to interview former Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) Sheri Mecklenburg and AUSA Matthew Skiba concerning their conduct in the grand jury,” the petition states.
Mecklenburg, who led the grand jury presentations, retired last month and says she followed instructions from Boutros’ leadership team “at every turn,” the Sun-Times reported.
The six defendants’ case collapsed in May, after Perry found apparent misconduct in grand jury transcripts that prosecutors had redacted before handing them to her, Above the Law reported.
“[A]ll of this was redacted out of the versions of the transcripts that I got. And frankly, it is that that I find the most problematic,” Perry said at a May 21 hearing.
Perry also asked the government to turn over any communications with people outside the Chicago U.S. attorney’s office about charging decisions in the case.
She also asked for an Oct. 14, 2025, email sent to Boutros with a grand jury transcript attached, and any replies or forwards. Defendants have said that the records requested by Perry could show White House involvement.
