Ex-FBI Chicago chief sues Justice Department, says he was made a 'scapegoat'

The former head of the FBI's Chicago field office sued the Justice Department and three of its top officials on Monday, alleging he was forced into retirement as a "scapegoat" for the collapse of a politically charged prosecution of immigration protesters known as the "Broadview Six" case.

Douglas DePodesta, who led the FBI's Chicago field office for nearly two years before stepping down in July, filed a nine-count civil complaint in the Northern District of Illinois naming U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros, FBI Director Kash Patel, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the FBI and the Justice Department as defendants. The suit, assigned to U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly, seeks reinstatement, back pay, compensatory damages and attorney's fees, and includes claims of defamation and violations of his constitutional and federal employment rights.

What the complaint alleges

At the center of the suit is a claim that Boutros told Justice Department leadership that DePodesta and his sister-in-law, attorney Nancy DePodesta, had "conspired to destroy" the Broadview Six prosecution. Nancy DePodesta represented defendant Michael Rabbitt in that case. DePodesta's complaint calls the conspiracy claim false and says Boutros spread it to deflect blame after the case fell apart over misconduct inside his own office.

The complaint, first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, also describes an October 7, 2025, meeting in DePodesta's office attended by Boutros, Patel, Blanche and Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald, at which it says Boutros "discussed the Broadview Six investigation with his superiors" at the department. DePodesta's lawyers argue that meeting undercuts a March 30, 2026, court filing in which Boutros's office denied having any outside communications, including with the White House, about the decision to charge the six protesters. The complaint further alleges that "persons close to the Trump administration called for criminal prosecution of the protesters," singling out one defendant, Kat Abughazaleh, who is now running for Congress.

Neither Boutros nor a Justice Department spokesperson responded publicly to the lawsuit Monday. Nancy DePodesta issued a statement calling the rumors about her and her brother-in-law "utterly false" and said it was "heartbreaking and shameful" that he was pushed out over them. DePodesta told the Associated Press, "I saw the writing on the wall."

Abughazaleh, the Broadview Six defendant named in the complaint, is a former progressive media personality now seeking a U.S. House seat from Illinois. After the charges against her were dropped, she said the administration had hoped the prosecution would silence protesters but that "it's not going to work." Her case became a flashpoint for Democratic lawmakers already criticizing the administration's use of federal law enforcement against demonstrators who opposed immigration raids in the Chicago area.

The case that triggered it

The Broadview Six prosecution grew out of a September 2025 protest outside an immigration detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, part of the Trump administration's Operation Midway Blitz immigration enforcement campaign in the Chicago area. A grand jury twice declined to indict the six protesters before prosecutors secured an indictment on October 23, 2025. Boutros dropped the remaining charges with prejudice on May 21, 2026, after acknowledging apparent misconduct in how his office handled the grand jury, including improper contact with jurors.

Boutros took office in April 2025 on a temporary appointment and was sworn in by Chief Judge Virginia Kendall after being appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi; the district's judges later approved him for a permanent term effective August 5, 2025, under the federal law governing vacancy appointments. The collapse of the Broadview Six case became the most visible failure of Operation Midway Blitz, under which federal prosecutors charged roughly 30 people; only two have been convicted, and most of the remaining cases were dropped or dismissed.

Fallout inside two courtrooms

The civil suit lands as the original criminal matter remains unresolved before a different judge. U.S. District Judge April Perry, who presided over the Broadview Six case, ordered Boutros and three assistant U.S. attorneys — William Hogan, Matthew Skiba and Andres Almendarez — to testify under oath on November 16 about the grand jury irregularities. In a seven-page order issued the same day DePodesta's lawsuit was filed, Perry wrote that Boutros's prior explanations for what happened were "hard to credit" and, in places, "nearly unfathomable."

More than 100 former federal prosecutors had already signed a public letter earlier this year accusing Boutros of damaging his office's reputation, and Illinois Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth called on him to resign after the case fell apart. The dismissed defendants have separately asked Perry to appoint a special counsel to investigate the misconduct, arguing the Justice Department cannot credibly police itself in a case this politically charged.

"There is more than an adequate factual basis for the Court to pursue an inquiry," Judge Perry wrote in ordering the November testimony.

One of the line prosecutors on the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan, resigned in September and wrote in his resignation letter that Boutros had "scapegoated and publicly vilified" him over the grand jury problems; he has since asked to participate in Perry's inquiry as an independent party rather than as a Justice Department witness. The competing accounts from Boutros's own former deputies have made it harder for the department to present a unified defense as both the criminal inquiry and DePodesta's new civil case move forward.

• Nine counts in DePodesta's civil complaint, filed Monday in Chicago's federal court
• Six protesters originally charged in the Broadview case; a grand jury rejected the indictment twice before it was returned
• Roughly 30 people charged under Operation Midway Blitz; two convictions to date
• November 16 is the date Judge Perry ordered Boutros and three line prosecutors to testify under oath

Who is affected, and what happens next

The dispute reaches well beyond the two men at its center. DePodesta, a career agent who joined the bureau in 2002 and spent more than two decades investigating drug trafficking, public corruption, terrorism and foreign counterintelligence cases before taking over the Chicago office, retired at 55, two years short of the FBI's mandatory retirement age. In his farewell message to staff in July, he told colleagues he had "never backed down from a fight" when it meant protecting FBI personnel, adding that the stance had proven "unpopular" with his superiors. His lawsuit says morale inside the Chicago field office has suffered since his departure, and that rank-and-file agents viewed his ouster as proof the bureau would not defend them from political pressure originating in Washington.

The six original defendants, cleared with prejudice, are still pressing for an independent investigation into how they were charged. Boutros, who continues to lead one of the Justice Department's largest U.S. attorney's offices, faces simultaneous pressure from Perry's inquiry and now DePodesta's civil claims.

The Justice Department is widely expected to contest Perry's testimony order; a newly assigned department attorney, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, has already questioned in court filings whether her document requests were legally binding. DePodesta's lawsuit, meanwhile, moves onto Judge Kennelly's docket for an initial scheduling conference, a process that will determine whether Boutros, Patel and Blanche must answer the allegations in depositions of their own. Both tracks point toward the same unresolved question that has hung over the Broadview Six case for a year: who, if anyone, inside the Justice Department pushed for protesters to be charged, and why the public explanations for what happened have kept changing.