Inset: U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Andrew Boutros (DOJ). Background: The United States District Court Northern District of Illinois in Chicago (Administrative Office of the United States Courts).
The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, which encompasses Chicago, was found in violation of a sealing order barring the government from commenting on a pending federal case.
During a Thursday hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laura McNally issued a bench ruling that took U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros to task for his violation — while stopping short of holding him in contempt.
On Wednesday, the court issued a terse minute entry on the docket, denying a government motion to strike "which asks that the Court strike the July 9, 2026, hearing date," court records show.
The judge told the office's top prosecutor the hearing was necessary so she could look him in the eye and convey the importance of "scrupulously" honoring orders that put case information under lock and key, according to a courtroom report by Bloomberg Law.
"Thank God, no concrete harm came as a result of this violation," McNally said. "I'm going to be making no finding here that you acted with any nefarious purpose or that this was done in direct and open defiance of the court order."
Last week, Boutros stood alongside Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI head Kash Patel to announce charges against alleged members of the transnational gang Tren de Aragua. The case is premised on kidnapping charges — and was subject to a sealing order issued at the request of the prosecutors working on the case.
Once the line prosecutors learned about the impending press conference, they filed an informal motion asking for the sealing order to be lifted, according to the court docket. An avalanche of confusion ensued, with the court directing the government to formally file its request, bemoaning the lack of said request, and disagreeing about when the request was actually made on the day in question.
On Thursday, the judge cleared up the timeline. She said prosecutors came to her less than 30 minutes before the press conference started and represented that they needed to obtain the ruling within the next 15 minutes. McNally, however, was unable to do so, she said.
"The Court relied on the sincerity and truthfulness of that representation, and it granted the motion," the judge wrote earlier this month, in reference to the original sealing order. "As of the date of the motion to unseal, less than 48 hours after the arrest warrants were issued, the Government represents that the defendants have not all been arrested. One defendant remains at large."
In other words, the judge, in rejecting the unsealing order, noted that the government announced the case without having all the defendants in custody. That oversight had since been remedied, Boutros explained to the judge during Thursday's hearing.
The U.S. Attorney went on to describe the incident as "very regrettable and very unfortunate" and added that he intended to comply with the sealing order "while recognizing all the exigent circumstances that, quite candidly, I didn't ask for."
"I didn't ask for this press conference, I wasn't looking to go to D.C.," Boutros said, passing some responsibility on to his own bosses.
In a Wednesday filing, the U.S. Attorney's Office expressed a different perspective. From that filing, at length:
The United States Attorney understood the defendants' arrests and charges would come up during the press conference. The United States Attorney likewise understood that such information was subject to a sealing order with which he was familiar…Accordingly, although the United States Attorney's preference was to unseal the complaint and associated material before the press announcement, the United States Attorney understood that the press announcement complied with the letter and spirit of the sealing order, because the press announcement was for the purpose of facilitating "the enforcement of criminal law," based on the event's purposes[.]
"The government respectfully submits that it did not violate any clear and unambiguous terms of the sealing order, which the government proposed and which this Court entered for the purpose of facilitating law enforcement's efforts," the filing goes on. "Given all of this, the government respectfully submits that it complied with the letter and spirit of the Court's sealing order."
On Thursday, Boutros reiterated the notion his remarks complied with language in the order that allowed disclosures "as necessary to facilitate the enforcement of criminal law."
But the judge was not having it.
"I would not have signed an order that permitted the full discretion of the entire law enforcement community to decide that 'at this point we think what we are doing here should not be sealed,'" McNally said.