Conversation
-
The Broadview ICE Agent’s 7-Minute Gap
source
I’m still working on my big post showing that US Attorney Andrew Boutros made a false claim in his attempt to stave off sanctions for the misconduct in the Broadview 6 case.But first I want to point to a seven minute … well, let’s call it an anomaly. I’m not yet sure it’s a gap … that occurred on the second day of grand jury testimony, the day grand jurors told prosecutor Sheri Mecklenburg that her case was a crock of shit.
As I noted in this post, his explanation for how the Front Office (that is, he himself and his Criminal Chief) got involved “in realtime” doesn’t make sense. The post laid out Boutros’ weird attempt to rationalize AUSA William Hogan’s failure to inform Judge April Perry that she was mistaken in believing that the huge gaps in the grand jury transcripts they gave her were due to tech failures. Boutros pointed to things like orange lights and on buttons to justify Hogan’s lack of candor.
Boutros points to Mecklenburg’s reference to her battery running out as a tech problem. But that does’t reflect any involvement by his managers at all, or explain when they would have heard something was wrong to know to intervene.
Boutros attributes the way the transcript that day ended to yet more technical difficulties.
Agent A gave his testimony. Id. at 40-54. After another technical issue, the transcript reveals there was off-the-record discussion and “the testimony was abruptly stopped.” Id. at 54. The grand jury was not asked to return an indictment that day. Id.; R. 187 at 32. Rather, when Experienced AUSA 1 contacted members of the Front Office in “realtime” regarding the “excusing of grand jurors,” the grand jury session was “immediately called off.” R. 187 at 51.
Mecklenburg’s battery ran out.
O. Did you use your flashing law enforcement lights?
A. I did not, although I — I thought that I could.
Q. Let me stop you.
A. Okay.
MS. MECKLENBURG: I need the batteries on the recorder.
(Discussion held off the record.)
(Whereupon the testimony was abruptly stopped.)
This may well be a technical issue, but it doesn’t explain why Boutros credited himself — in his first speaking part in this case on April 21 — with calling off the grand jury sessions in “real time.”
With respect to the excusing of grand jurors that took place, which was the second time that the prosecutor sought to return an indictment, that is an issue that I was aware of in realtime. And once I became aware of it, I immediately called off that grand jury session.
Especially since he pinky swears he didn’t know of the vouching or ex parte conversations that were at issue in the October 16 grand jury appearance he claims to have called off in real time.
9 The United States Attorney was emailed a copy of the transcript from the October 9, 2025, grand jury presentation on October 14, 2025, but has no recollection of reviewing the transcript at that time, and is quite certain he did not review the transcript at that time. The United States Attorney did not receive a copy of the October 16 or October 23, 2025, transcripts until late April 2026, shortly before the Government moved to dismiss the indictment. At that time (late April 2026), the United States Attorney reviewed relevant portions of all three transcripts. Irrespective, no one ever brought the vouching or ex parte issues to the United States Attorney’s attention until late April 2026, nor was the United States Attorney aware of the vouching or ex parte issues until late April 2026.
By all appearances, that session ended because Mecklenburg’s battery ran out, not because Boutros intervened.
The 7-minute, um, anomaly may explain it.
The treatment of both law enforcement witnesses’ testimony is funky here; I’ll deal with the weirdness of the FBI witness in the main post, probably. The transcript for that guy was released in three batches: DOJ used his testimony as an excuse to redact broad swaths of the redacted October 9 transcript they first shared with Judge Perry. Then DOJ unsealed parts of it for what was publicly released as the main transcript. Then they released a partial transcript of his testimony later.
(I want to thank Biden Bus Barrister Matthew Skiba for helping me understand the anomaly with this transcript.)
With the ICE agent’s October 16 testimony (see note below for his October 23 testimony), however, DOJ released his transcript as part of the main transcript, but showed that it was transcribed separately.
That October 16 transcript includes time stamps (the October 9 and October 23 ones do not). The end of the main transcript shows him walking in for testimony at 10:04.
A notation explains that his testimony “is not included in this transcript.” End of excerpt.
The second part of the transcript shows the grand jury reconvening at 2:43PM, seemingly almost four hours and forty minutes later — an awfully long time for lunch!! — and starts with the foreperson swearing him in. (The difference in typeface size here is due to my screencap.)
The timestamp on the transcript is not far off that 2:43 start. Mecklenburg starts at 3:10.
That timestamp seems to increment as you’d expect from there, with timestamps in the margin every 20 or 30 seconds. The third to last question Mecklenburg asks him is marked as 3:33.
All that suggests he testified for almost 23 minutes.
Except that the last timestamp on his testimony is 10:11 — seven minutes after the end of the first part of the transcript. But four hours before when this session formally began.
Call me crazy but where it says Ms. Mecklenburg looks like heavier typeface.
You could attribute it to some screw up in the two grand jury transcripts except for two things: the clear identification of the second session starting at 2:43PM. And the tick tock of the timestamp in the margin that suddenly reverts back four hours. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick to–oops! My battery died!
There are some other, um, anomalies with this transcript that I’m still unpacking.
For the moment, all I can say is that the ICE agent who drove his Expedition into a bunch of people who were peacefully protesting and then accused them of assaulting him also seems to have a time machine, in which he flew back and forth in time four hours as grand jurors called the whole thing a crock of shit.
Update: I didn’t talk about the ICE dude’s second testimony, on October 23. His testimony was handled similarly to the way it was on October 16, with a separate testimony, with its own timestamp, within the whole. His testimony appears about 45 minutes into the grand jury presentation, and it continues for 40 pages after that. Aside from the introductions, there are no timestamps on this transcript.
The post The Broadview ICE Agent’s 7-Minute Gap appeared first on emptywheel.