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mahatmakanejeeves

(70,923 posts) Fri May 22, 2026, 03:01 PM Friday

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin fires Sheri Mecklenberg as Senate Judiciary Committee counsel after Broadview Six allegations

Source: CBS News

Local News
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin fires Sheri Mecklenberg as Senate Judiciary Committee counsel after Broadview Six allegations

By Sara Tenenbaum
May 22, 2026 / 1:11 PM CDT / CBS Chicago

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin has fired former federal prosecutor Sheri Mecklenberg from her role as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee following allegations of prosecutorial misconduct with the grand jury in the Broadview Six case.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros dismissed all charges against the defendants in the case stemming from a protest outside the Broadview ICE facility in September 2025 on Thursday, telling a judge there was "improper handling of grand jury proceedings" by the lead prosector in the case.

Judge April Perry, summarizing the unredacted grand jury transcript she had reviewed, pointed out several glaring issues she had found, including improper "prosecutorial vouching," in which an assistant U.S. attorney put "her personal credibility and trustworthiness on the line in support of the charges." ...The same prosecutor also apparently excused grand jurors "who disagreed with the government's case" when presented with it during the first of three sessions, asking them "to not partake in the second hearing," the judge said.

According to a transcript of the closed-door hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Skiba reluctantly pointed the finger at Mecklenberg, telling Perry he'd only started as a prosecutor in July 2026 and the grand jury proceedings in the Broadview Six case was only his second time before a grand jury.

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Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/dick-durbin-fires-sheri-mecklenberg-senate-judiciary-committee-counsel-broadview-six/

Reposted by Chris Geidner
https://bsky.app/profile/chrisgeidner.bsky.social

******
Jose Pagliery
‪@josepagliery.bsky.social‬

This morning, reporters asked why the prosecutor at the heart of the Broadview Six scandal — who could face sanctions for misconduct — was working on a DOJ detail with Senate Judiciary Committee democrats.

Sen. Durbin's office just announced she's been dismissed.

https://www.notus.org/courts/durbin-senate-judiciary-protestors-broadview-prosecution

The Prosecutor at the Center of a Botched DOJ Case Was Working For Senate Democrats
Sheri Mecklenburg had been assigned to work for the minority on the Judiciary Committee, but ranking member Dick Durbin said she had been dismissed on Friday.
www.notus.org
2:08 PM · May 22, 2026
******

This morning, reporters asked why the prosecutor at the heart of the Broadview Six scandal â€”Â who could face sanctions for misconduct â€”Â was working on a DOJ detail with Senate Judiciary Committee democrats.

Sen. Durbin's office just announced she's been dismissed.

www.notus.org/courts/durbi...
— Jose Pagliery (@josepagliery.bsky.social) 2026-05-22T18:08:02.968Z

3 replies

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Highlight:

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin fires Sheri Mecklenberg as Senate Judiciary Committee counsel after Broadview Six allegations (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Friday OP

Seems to be poor judgement on the committee's behalf. Buddyzbuddy Friday #1

Good. chowder66 Friday #2

As Trump Politicizes Justice Dept., Prosecutors Struggle With Grand Juries (New York Times Gift Article) LetMyPeopleVote 9 hrs ago #3

Buddyzbuddy

(2,930 posts)

1. Seems to be poor judgement on the committee's behalf.

Reply to mahatmakanejeeves (Original post)

Fri May 22, 2026, 05:22 PM

Friday

Sure, hindsight is 20/20 but why not outside counsel. I would assume anybody working for DOJ at this point is suspect. Even if they're holdovers, why? JMHO.

chowder66

(12,542 posts)

2. Good.

Reply to mahatmakanejeeves (Original post)

Fri May 22, 2026, 05:41 PM

Friday

LetMyPeopleVote

(182,423 posts)

3. As Trump Politicizes Justice Dept., Prosecutors Struggle With Grand Juries (New York Times Gift Article)

Reply to mahatmakanejeeves (Original post)

Tue May 26, 2026, 03:44 PM

9 hrs ago

Judges and grand juries have increasingly lost faith in the Justice Department as the president uses it to reward his friends and go after his opponents.

Link to tweet

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/us/politics/trump-justice-department-grand-juries.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lVA.VQWU.zHLKWrAqZOCg&smid=bs-share

In the past several months, prosecutors have repeatedly failed to persuade grand juries that the cases they have brought warrant criminal charges. And if it were not unusual enough, they have also been admonished at least three times since last November by federal judges who have accused them of misconduct.

The latest setback came in Chicago, where a judge cited a remarkable list of grand jury errors in a case that was dismissed against four Democratic activists about to face trial for impeding the police during a protest last fall at a suburban immigration detention facility.....

The prosecutors also stacked the deck in their own favor by removing from the panel some grand jurors who had voted against them when considering an earlier version of the charges. Making matters even worse, they tried to hide these maneuvers by redacting the grand jury transcripts — that is, until Judge Perry ordered them to give her the full copies.

The government’s missteps were bad enough to necessitate tossing out the case against the critics of the president’s immigration plan just days before it was supposed to go to trial.....

There are almost no statistics that gauge how often prosecutors fail to secure indictments or are chastised by judges because of their grand jury presentations, if only because such events used to be rare. Legal experts say it is just as uncommon for jurists like Judge Perry to shine a spotlight on grand jury proceedings, which are held in secret, although that, too, has been happening more often.

Barbara L. McQuade, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said that in her 20 years in the Justice Department, she had never worked on a case — or even heard of one — in which a judge had examined grand jury transcripts because of concerns about misconduct.

“Courts almost never do that, mostly because they trust that the government is acting honestly,” Ms. McQuade said. “But if the department demonstrates that it isn’t worthy of that trust, then it invites judges to look under the hood.”....

Part of the problem, legal experts say, is that Mr. Trump has hired inexperienced loyalists to fill senior roles in the Justice Department even as hundreds of career prosecutors have departed — either by their own choice or because they were forced out for having worked on cases that ran afoul of the president.

Junior prosecutors typically attend a weeklong course on the ins and outs of working with grand juries, and often trail more seasoned colleagues before they take the lead in presenting cases. But leaders in politically appointed posts do not get the same kind or amount of training.....

But over the past year or so, there has been a flurry of no true bills in federal courts across the country. Most have occurred in cities like Los Angeles and Washington, where grand jurors have rejected several cases involving people accused of protesting the administration’s immigration crackdowns and surges in federal law enforcement.

Other high-profile failures have involved grand juries hearing cases against Mr. Trump’s political foes — among them, Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, and the six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video reminding military and intelligence personnel of their obligation to disobey illegal orders.

This is a great article on the issues being raised about trump's attempts to subvert the grand jury process. Grand juries serve an important role and trump's DOJ is resorting to fraud to get true bills.

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