Chicago, Illinois: Former FBI Chief DePodesta Sues, Says He Was Forced Out Over Broadview Six Case

The former head of the FBI office in Chicago sued the Justice Department and the FBI on Monday, saying he was ordered to resign after officials blamed him for the collapse of the Broadview Six prosecution.

Douglas DePodesta filed the lawsuit Monday in federal court in Chicago. He led the Chicago field office and its 1,100 employees for just under two years, from 2024 until last July, after more than 20 years with the bureau. The suit names U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros, in both his official and personal capacity, FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Todd Blanche, the FBI and the Justice Department.

"My resignation was in no way voluntary. I was ordered to resign, period," DePodesta told CBS News Chicago.

The Broadview Six case

The Broadview Six were six people charged after a protest in September 2025 outside the immigration facility in Broadview, a west suburb of Chicago, during Operation Midway Blitz. The charges were later dismissed. According to the lawsuit, U.S. District Judge April Perry demanded the grand jury transcripts, and they showed that prosecutors on Boutros's team improperly influenced grand jurors and excluded dissenting votes to secure the charges. Prosecutors made three attempts to indict the protesters and dismissed jurors who expressed skepticism about the evidence, The Washington Sun reported. The case was dropped in May 2026 after prosecutors admitted significant errors.

One of the six was Kat Abughazaleh, who was running for a U.S. House seat from Illinois at the time and lost her primary in March. On Monday she said the lawsuit matched what she had believed since she was indicted.

Pressure claims in the complaint

DePodesta says Boutros pressed him to open FBI investigations into people based on their political views or affiliations in opposition to the administration, and that he refused each time Boutros could not provide facts that justified an investigation. In one case described in the complaint, Boutros sent him a video of an immigration agent in a physical confrontation with a protester and pressed him to have an agent swear that the video showed an assault on a federal officer. DePodesta says he and the agent believed the video showed incidental touching as the agent tackled the protester, and he refused to order an affidavit he did not believe was true.

The complaint also describes an Oct. 7, 2025 meeting in DePodesta's Chicago office, at 2111 West Roosevelt Road, where Boutros discussed the Broadview Six case with Blanche, Patel and Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald.

The blame claim

When the case fell apart, DePodesta says, Boutros told superiors that DePodesta had conspired with his sister-in-law, defense lawyer Nancy DePodesta, to destroy the case. She represented Michael Rabbitt, one of the Broadview Six defendants. DePodesta says he had no role in the decision to seek charges and never spoke with his sister-in-law about the case.

The lawsuit says FBI Deputy Director Christopher Raia told him in June that Boutros was making him the fall guy, and that Associate Deputy Director B. Chad Yarbrough told him about a month later that Patel did not want the controversy and insisted DePodesta be terminated regardless of whether the claims were true. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth had called for Boutros's resignation in June, citing chaos and alleged misconduct in his office.

DePodesta brings claims including defamation and violations of his constitutional rights and federal employment protections. He asks the court to order his reinstatement and award back pay and damages. The Justice Department and the FBI Chicago office did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and CBS News Chicago said it had not heard back from the offices of Boutros and Blanche.