Ex-Chicago FBI chief says he was ousted over a failed protesters case, sues Trump administration

CHICAGO (AP) — The former head of the FBI’s Chicago field office says he lost his job after being wrongly blamed for prosecutions that fell apart against six people who protested the federal immigration crackdown in the city, according to a lawsuit he filed Monday.

Douglas DePodesta, a 24-year veteran of the FBI, says in the suit against top Justice Department officials that federal prosecutors pushed “politically motivated prosecutions” against Chicago’s demonstrators before gathering evidence. He says his superiors told him that FBI Director Kash Patel wanted him fired, and he stepped down against his will this summer.

“I saw the writing on the wall,” DePodesta told The Associated Press on Monday.

He accused the top federal prosecutor in Illinois, Andrew Boutros, of starting a “campaign within the Department of Justice to blame” him after the so-called “Broadview Six” case dramatically fell apart earlier this year.

Boutros’ office declined to comment. The FBI and the Justice Department, which are both named in the suit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Federal prosecutors brought charges against around 30 protesters during the Chicago immigration enforcement operation, called Operation Midway Blitz. Many of those charges have been dropped or dismissed.

According to DePodesta’s lawsuit, Boutros faced pressure from the Justice Department throughout the crackdown to charge protesters with felonies.

“Boutros sent DePodesta emails demanding that DePodesta open FBI investigations into individuals with political views or affiliations in opposition to the Trump administration,” DePodesta’s attorneys wrote.

Boutros often pressured attorneys under him in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois to press charges “before investigating the objective evidence,” and he wanted felony charges when assisting attorneys “favored misdemeanors or no charges at all,” the suit alleges.

The office last October charged six people with conspiring to obstruct a federal officer, a felony, for their actions during a protest at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview.

Transcripts turned over to the court, which a judge ordered Boutros’ office to remove redactions from, later revealed that a grand jury twice refused to indict the six, despite prosecutors’ urgings and a highly unusual speech Boutros gave to jurors. Boutros dropped all charges against the six in May as the court moved to investigate possible prosecutorial misconduct.

Boutros “repeatedly complained to his superiors in Washington” that the failure was DePodesta’s fault “to deflect attention from his own malfeasance,” DePodesta’s attorneys wrote in the suit. DePodesta denied Boutros’ accusations to his superiors at the FBI, and they conceded that he was only being forced out because of the “political pressure Boutros created,” according to the suit.

The suit alleges Boutros told Justice Department leadership that DePodesta and his sister-in-law Nancy DePodesta, who is an attorney representing one of the six former defendants, “conspired to destroy” the case.

Nancy DePodesta, who represents Michael Rabbitt, one of the former defendants, confirmed to the AP that she is Douglas DePodesta’s sister-in-law.

“There is no one at the FBI who took their oath of office and their ethical and moral responsibilities more seriously than Doug,” Nancy DePodesta said in a statement to the AP. “It is both heartbreaking and shameful that he was forced out of his position based on what appear to be utterly false rumors spread by” Boutros, she added.

In late September, one of the prosecutors on the “Broadview Six” case abruptly resigned, writing in a scathing resignation letter that Boutros had “scapegoated and publicly vilified” her. She filed a motion asking the court to treat her as an independent party going forward.

The former defendants have asked U.S. District Judge April Perry to appoint a special counsel to look into possible misconduct by prosecutors. At an Oct. 1 hearing, Perry ordered further “fact-finding” about communications between Boutros’ office and Justice Department leadership.

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Mayes-Osterman is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.