The Chicago US Attorney’s Office has submitted its objection to requests from the Broadview 6 that there be some kind of further punishment — discovery, contempt, an investigation — for the misconduct on the case.
There are some gaping holes in the argument, which I’ll return to.
But there’s one part of the argument that deserves immediate attention.
In the Broadview 6 requests, they asked for discovery on the role of Todd Blanche’s fixer, Aakash Singh, noting both that he was the instrument of the vindictive prosecution against Kilmar Abrego, and that his reported conduct — that is, dismissing grand jurors who object to a case — is precisely what happened in this one.
Any documents, communications, and records between any member of the Front Office or any AUSA in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois and Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh5 or Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche relating to the investigation, decision to charge, the proposed indictment, the grand jury proceedings, or the postindictment proceedings in this case before the Court. From September 19, 2025 through May 31, 2026. (This request includes cell phone records from any cell phone used for such communication with Mr. Singh.)
5 The request regarding Aakash Singh is well-supported based upon publicly available information regarding Mr. Singh’s direct involvement in matters of this type, including presentations made to grand juries.
First, publicly available reporting indicates that Mr. Singh has played a central role in guiding the prosecution of “top administration targets such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia, James Comey, and Don Lemon” and, of particular note here, in seeking “to dismiss [grand] jurors who presented hurdles” when “grand juries refused to indict . . . following mass street arrests.” Ben Penn, In-Your-Face DOJ Aide Rides Prosecutors for ‘Chief Client’ Trump, Bloomberg Law, Feb. 19, 2026, https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/in-yourface-doj-aide-rides-prosecutors-for-chief-client-trump (emphasis added).
Second, Mr. Singh engaged in numerous substantive—and now Courtdocumented —communications directly with the prosecution team in the Abrego Garcia case. Ex. A, Court Order in Case No. 25-cr-115, M.D. Tenn. (Dkt. #312) (identifying numerous specific communications to and from Mr. Singh and the assigned prosecutor related to that prosecution, as well as Mr. Singh’s involvement, oversight, and direction to the prosecution team, at pp. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, and 32). [emphasis original]
The DOJ response objects to this request in a number of nested ways. There’s no evidence of contempt, Judge April Perry is not competent to conduct an investigation, and much of this is privileged, among other arguments. Blah blah blah.
But the Todd Blanche’s DOJ did something that it has generally stopped short of doing, in spite of all the various ways DOJ has invoked expansive authority this term.
It invoked Trump v. US.
Separately, as the Supreme Court recently held, “[i]nvestigative and prosecutorial decisionmaking is ‘the special province of the Executive Branch,’” and so even the “President may discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with his Attorney General and other Justice Department officials to carry out his constitutional duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593, 620 (2024) (quotations and citations omitted). Thus, members of the Executive Branch are constitutionally required to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” and it is entirely appropriate for them to “decide which crimes to investigate and prosecute.” Id. (quoting U.S. Const. Art. II, § 3). Although the Supreme Court in 2024 made clear that the law permits such interactions, as already noted and consistent with Department policy, in this matter, the United States Attorney reported the Office’s charging decision to Main Justice shortly before the first grand jury presentation in this case. R. 110 at 4, n.2.15 Former Defendants are not entitled to any communications relating to charging decisions or any other intra-agency or interagency communications, including those with other individuals in Main Justice or federal law enforcement, because the law disallows their access to such communications both as a matter of separation of powers and privilege.
In a footnote, it implicitly (with the citation to In re United States) threatened Judge April Perry with a mandamus petition if she went there, even while not answering the unnamed counsel’s question (because the answer is limited to charging decisions, not — for example — grand jury tactics on how to obtain abusive indictments).
15 On July 15, 2026, counsel for one of the former Defendants sent an email to the U.S. Attorney’s Office asking whether the Office “still stands” behind its assertion that there were “no communications” “with anyone outside the USAO” regarding “who and what to charge” or its “investigatory or charging decisions.” R. 110 at 3 (bold in original, italics added). The Front Office is not aware of any communications in which it took direction from anyone outside the U.S. Attorney’s Office regarding its decisions as to what investigatory steps the local prosecution team would take or who the local prosecution team would charge when prosecutors went into the grand jury to indict this case. Out of an abundance of caution, the Office notes there was a virtual meeting on September 27, 2025, among Main Justice lawyers, the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office, lawyers from at least one other U.S. Attorney’s Office on the West Coast, and many federal law enforcement agencies where the September 26 “Broadview” incident was mentioned (and a public video played) as part of a broader discussion of incidents and conduct against ICE during that time. To the Front Office’s knowledge, the virtual meeting did not mention the identity or political affiliation of any person. It was only later when Chicago FBI agents assigned to the case began investigating the matter that the Office learned the identity of some of the people involved in the incident. Moreover, as would be expected in the normal course, there were discussions between the Office and Main Justice regarding such things as case updates, especially given the publicity the case generated after it had been charged. These privileged discussions are not only permitted but are contemplated. See supra 19; In re United States, 398 F.3d at 618 (“How the United States reaches its litigating positions, who said what to whom within the prosecutor’s office, and so on, are for the Attorney General and the President to evaluate. The Judicial Branch is limited to assessing counsel’s public deeds.”).
In May, Jack Goldsmith argued that this type of reliance is precisely what Trump might try, but we really hadn’t seen it yet.
In an article published last year, I argued that the decision would be less important for its immunity holding than for its rulings “on the President’s exclusive removal power and exclusive power over investigation and prosecution.” I claimed that while it was “hard to predict” how the Supreme Court would treat these rulings,
it is not hard to predict how the executive branch will use the Trump rulings, at least until they are later revised by courts. In litigation it will invoke them in support of broad presidential power. It will also invoke them inside the executive branch, in many contexts outside of judicial review, in deciding which executive branch actions are lawful, and in deciding, relatedly, which congressional statutes to disregard as unconstitutional.
I speculated in particular that the executive branch would rely on Trump to expand its law enforcement discretion and its authority over removal, presidential supervision, and executive privilege.
It is still early, but to date the public record shows that Trump has had less formal impact than I anticipated.
Now we have, in an instance in which elected Democrats and Democratic candidates are testing whether the misconduct used to indict them came from the top.
In an instance where there’s good reason to believe the past instrument of Todd Blanche’s vindictive prosecution had struck again.
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