Attorney General Pam Bondi has named Andrew S. Boutros to serve as Chicago’s top federal prosecutor on an interim basis, according to a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office.
The office has been without a permanent leader for two years, ever since the resignation of former U.S. Attorney John Lausch. It has been led since March 2023 by Acting U.S. Attorney Morris “Sonny” Pasqual.
Boutros is co-chair of Government Investigations and White Collar Practice at Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP. He worked as a federal prosecutor in Chicago between 2008 and 2015, including in the Financial Crimes and Special Prosecutions Section. He’s set to return to the U.S. attorney’s office at a time of high anxiety, locally and in the Justice Department more broadly.
The interim appointment goes into effect Aprl 7 and allows Boutros to serve for four months without confirmation by the Senate.
U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, a Peoria Republican and former federal prosecutor, formally opened the search for Chicago’s new top fed a month ago. At the time, he called it a “priority” for the new U.S. attorney to support the policies of the Trump Administration. LaHood wound up interviewing a variety of qualified candidates and sent a list of names to the White House for consideration, according to a source familiar with the process.
However, Boutros’ name was not among them, the source said.
If Boutros is confirmed to serve permanently as U.S. attorney, he would be the first since Lausch, nominated by President Donald Trump during his first term in office. Former President Joe Biden never secured confirmation of his own choice to lead the office, April Perry.
Lausch served during Trump’s first term and was highly regarded in Chicago despite the Republican president’s deep unpopularity here. Boutros faces similar circumstances, but in far more turbulent times, especially when it comes to the fate of the Justice Department.
Trump’s controversial 10 weeks in office have already led to high-profile resignations by Justice Department officials. While no such drama has played out in Chicago, many see Trump’s choice for U.S. attorney as key to the office’s future.
Boutros is a 2001 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law who largely handled financial and drug crimes while serving as a federal prosecutor, including the case of online Silk Road drug dealer Cornelis Jan “SuperTrips” Slomp.
Since leaving for private practice in the last decade, he’s defended clients or conducted internal investigations also dealing with embezzlement, trade secret theft, cryptocurrencies, bribery, kickback schemes and public corruption, according to his Shook, Hardy & Bacon biography.
Now his job will be to guide a storied office that has come under increased scrutiny despite some high-profile victories. And many will be watching Boutros to see how he serves under a president who has made his distaste for the Justice Department very clear.
Already, Trump has undone one of the most high-profile prosecutions in the office’s history by delivering a full and unconditional pardon to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich in February. In doing so, Trump said Blagojevich was “set up by a lot of bad people, some of the same people that I had to deal with.”
Since then, Trump used a speech at the Justice Department’s ceremonial Great Hall to describe prosecutors who once investigated him as “scum” and to declare that “our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice.”
“I stand before you today to declare that those days are over, and they are never going to come back and never coming back,” Trump said.
The president also issued an executive order Tuesday accusing Chicago-based Jenner & Block LLP of condoning “partisan ‘lawfare.’ ” The president pointed to its employment of Andrew Weissmann after he worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into suspected Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 campaign. Trump’s order calls for a review of security clearances held by Jenner employees and all Jenner contracts.
Trump’s interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., posted a statement to social media last month describing attorneys in his office as “President Trumps’ [sic] lawyers,” even though prosecutors traditionally view themselves as serving the public.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Justice Department has singled out Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and three other big-city mayors over claims that “schools in their respective cities may have failed to protect Jewish students from unlawful discrimination.”
Johnson was one of four mayors summoned to testify about their cities’ sanctuary status before a U.S. House committee this month, as well. U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer, an Alabama Republican, accused Johnson during that hearing of committing a crime and said, “I don’t understand why we haven’t been discussing obstruction of justice.”
Locally, prosecutors secured the historic conviction in February of former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, who now faces sentencing in June. The verdict against the Southwest Side Democrat was the culmination of an aggressive FBI investigation that dates back to 2014.
Still, indictments that resulted from that probe have been complicated by the U.S. Supreme Court’s limiting of a key bribery statute in 2024. The high court issued another ruling Friday, involving the prosecution of former Chicago Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, that could undermine things further.
The office recently lost one of the lead prosecutors in the Madigan case, Amarjeet Bhachu, who was a veteran of more than 20 years and served as chief of the Public Corruption and Organized Crime Section. And LaHood recently put a spotlight on a dramatic drop in local criminal filings as he announced his search for a new U.S. attorney.
Boutros’ selection is the latest twist in a saga that dates back to early 2021. That’s when Biden moved to replace most top federal prosecutors across the country early in his term. U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, both Democrats, urged Biden to keep Lausch in office to conclude “sensitive investigations.”
That was taken as a nod to the investigation that snared Madigan.
Durbin and Duckworth supported Lausch even though he had been nominated by Trump in 2017. Lausch remained in office until March 2023, when he left Pasqual in charge as acting U.S. attorney.
Biden nominated Perry, another former federal prosecutor, to replace Lausch in June 2023. But by then, Biden was more than halfway through his term. Then-U.S. Sen. JD Vance, an Ohio Republican, blocked Perry’s confirmation.
He insisted he did so to protest the indictments that had been handed up against Trump.
Perry’s nomination stalled. And in the end, Biden nominated Perry to become a federal judge. She was confirmed by the Senate in November. Trump returned to office in January, with Vance as his new vice president.
Meanwhile, there have also been other, more low-profile setbacks for the U.S. attorney’s office. A judge appears poised to order new trials in two major street-gang cases, involving convicted leaders of the Four Corner Hustlers and Wicked Town gangs. He’s considering it amid claims that prosecutors made undisclosed promises to witnesses in the cases.
Other complications have also surfaced since the president took office in January. The Justice Department’s revival of the death penalty under Trump has prompted claims of “vindictive prosecution” if the Wicked Town defendants win a new trial only to face execution, for example.
Separately, Trump issued an executive order calling for a pause and review of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement. It’s been pointed to by four people convicted in 2023 of conspiring to illegally influence Madigan on behalf of ComEd. The four have yet to be sentenced, and they’ve argued the case should be put on hold because their convictions are partly based on the FCPA.
Bhachu, before he left the office, made clear to a judge that it “will comply with whatever instructions we receive” from the Justice Department regarding that law.
Contributing: AP