Frequently asked questions

It is an independent advocacy and citizen-journalism project — a legal-research exercise that lays out, in full, the argument that the Broadview Six should be eligible to file with the Department of Justice's Anti-Weaponization Fund. It is not a filed legal pleading. It is not authorized by, endorsed by, or attributed to any defendant, their campaign, or their counsel. The site does not collect money or run a payment form. The donate buttons send you to the defendants' own verified fundraisers.

No. Bad Faith Prosecution wiki is an independent project. It is not affiliated with Ms. Abughazaleh, her campaign, her co-defendants, or their counsel. Links to her legal-defense fundraiser are provided because that fundraiser is public and was organized by her — the link does not imply endorsement of this site.

No. The site is a legal-research and advocacy exercise. It is not a substitute for a licensed attorney. If you are a defendant or a potential claimant in any related matter, consult counsel directly.

Because that is the honest label. Kat Abughazaleh is a former journalist; Danny at TheTatteredRose is doing the investigation and acting as a product manager guiding an AI-assisted workflow. The work is real and sourced, but it doesn't come out of a credentialed newsroom — so it doesn't claim the credentialed-profession label. Every factual claim on the site is drawn from primary documents or named reporting, and every source is on the page.

The site doesn't, exactly. The default subject is the group — the Broadview Six (“the Broadview Six,” “the defendants,” “they”). Kat-specific language is reserved for evidence that is genuinely Kat-specific: her IL-09 congressional campaign and the primary loss on March 17, 2026 mid-prosecution (the load-bearing § V.D factor (c) damages evidence); the existing project Fund Brief, which used her as the worked example; her higher public profile.

All three legal-defense funds — Kat + Andre, Michael Rabbitt, Brian Straw — are on Home and on /take-action, all three matter, and the donate band invites support for any or all.

Because the legal bills are real now, and the Fund is not currently available. As of June 2026 a federal court has blocked the Anti-Weaponization Fund and the administration says it will not move forward with it; no panel was seated and no claims were paid. The Broadview Six paid lawyers for seven months to fight a case the federal government itself ultimately dismissed. That debt is sitting on the defendants and their families today. Even before the block, the Fund's determinations were unreviewable and its payouts years away. The durable route to the fees is the Hyde Amendment, a motion that still takes time. The defense bills compounded yesterday.

Straight to the defendant's own verified fundraiser, in a new tab, hosted on GoFundMe or ActBlue. The site does not run a payment form and does not handle any donation directly. Each click target is the canonical platform URL — never a redirectable shortlink — because shortlinks have been hijacked in past cases.

The compact totals on Home and /take-action come from a live fetch of each fundraiser's public page at request time, with a manual snapshot in lib/config.ts as the fallback if the fetch fails. The snapshot date and amounts are stamped on the card so you can see when the number was last confirmed. Re-verify on the fundraiser page itself before any decision that depends on a precise total.

On September 26, 2025, a protest gathered outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Illinois, during the federal deportation campaign known as Operation Midway Blitz. On October 29, 2025, a federal grand jury indicted six of the participants — Michael Rabbitt (lead-named), Kat Abughazaleh, Andre Martin, Catherine Sharp, Brian Straw, and Joselyn Walsh — on charges the indictment lists as 18 U.S.C. §§ 111(a)(1), 372, and 2. The case came apart in layers: two defendants — Sharp and Walsh — were dismissed with prejudice in March 2026; the felony conspiracy count was replaced by a misdemeanor information on April 29 and formally dismissed with prejudice on May 7; the original indictment was dismissed on May 18. On May 21, 2026, the Government moved on its own oral motion to dismiss the last charge — the misdemeanor information — with prejudice, and Hon. April M. Perry granted it. U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros argued the motion. The trial scheduled for May 26 was cancelled.

The court identified grand-jury misconduct on in-camera review of the transcripts — prosecutorial vouching, exclusion of dissenting grand jurors, improper substantive contact with grand jurors, and the concealment of all three — redacted out of the transcripts the court received, which the judge called the most problematic.

That phrase is reported speech, not a verbatim transcript quote. Per CBS Chicago, NBC5, and Sun-Times reporting, the U.S. Attorney's office characterized the case in those terms. The verbatim on the record is sharper: Hon. April M. Perry said “I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts” (transcript p. 22, ll. 16–18) and “That trust has been broken” (p. 23, l. 25). AUSA Skiba conceded the prosecutor's vouching was “at a minimum, arguably misconduct” (p. 31, ll. 10–13). U.S. Attorney Boutros, also on the record, said there was “no deliberate misconduct” on the part of the prosecutors and that he too had been upset by what the grand-jury transcripts showed, “which is why we did dismiss that indictment.”

Two facts coexist. (1) Reporting described video showing protesters pushing against a federal vehicle during the September 26, 2025 protest. (2) None of the Broadview Six was convicted of anything; the felony conspiracy count was abandoned by the government in April 2026, the remaining misdemeanor information contained no specific allegations against any of them, and the case was dismissed with prejudice on May 21. /the-fund addresses this honestly under § V.D factor (b) (“the claimant's own actions”): joining a protest is constitutionally protected activity, and the government ultimately proved nothing.

A $1.776 billion U.S. Department of Justice fund, announced May 18, 2026 in DOJ Press Release 26-512. It traces to the May 2026 settlement in President Donald J. Trump v. Internal Revenue Service (S.D. Fla. No. 1:26-cv-20609) and the Attorney General's implementing order issued the next day. The money sits in the Treasury Judgment Fund (a perpetual appropriation, not a fresh act of Congress). A five-member panel appointed by the Attorney General was to decide claims; per § VI.B those determinations would be unreviewable: no appeal, no arbitration, no judicial review. As of June 2026 the Fund is not operating: a federal court blocked it on May 29, 2026, and on June 2 the administration said it would not move forward with it. No panel was seated and no claims were paid.

No, not as of June 2026. On May 29, 2026, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema (Eastern District of Virginia) temporarily barred the government from creating the Anti-Weaponization Fund or paying any claims, in a lawsuit brought by Democracy Forward (the named plaintiffs include a fired January 6 prosecutor and a professor acquitted of assaulting federal agents). The Justice Department said on June 1 that it 'disagrees strongly' but would comply. On June 2, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, 'We are not moving forward with the fund. Period.' Asked whether that meant never, he answered 'Correct.' No five-member commission was ever seated, no claims were accepted, and no money was paid. On June 12, 2026, Judge Brinkema gave the government about a week to enter a binding declaration from Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that the fund would never go forward, the condition she had set for dismissing the suit. On June 19, 2026, the Justice Department declined to enter it, calling the declaration 'unnecessary' and citing separation-of-powers concerns. Because the declaration was not filed, the court did not dismiss the suit; it proceeds. The preliminary injunction blocking the Anti-Weaponization Fund remains in place. This is why the site leads with the Hyde Amendment, a standing federal statute that does not depend on the Fund. The Fund eligibility argument is kept on the Fund page because it was always conditional, and it still shows that by the fund's own stated rules the Broadview Six qualified.

The site does not predict which the defendants and their counsel will choose; both are real choices and they are not mutually exclusive. Filing with the Fund doesn't waive a Hyde claim — accepting its money would. /the-fund lays out the Fund eligibility case in full; /the-catch lays out the structural obstacles (the partisan-definition reading, the unreviewable panel, the § V.B waiver that trades away the right to sue). The honest takeaway: both routes have advantages, and there are good-faith reasons to pursue either.

Not confirmed. Per CBS Chicago, the defense stated they plan to file an Anti-Weaponization Fund claim. The site does not state filing as a settled fact and will update if and when a primary source confirms a claim has been filed.

Yes — and the four-answer treatment of that objection is what the dark navy section of /the-fund exists for. In short: (A) the rule of the last antecedent confines “Democrat” to “elected officials,” not the separately enumerated federal employees, contractors, and agents; (B) the operative test in § V.C never mentions party; (C) DOJ Press Release 26-512 says in terms there are “no partisan requirements” to file; (D) constitutional avoidance and the bar on absurd results both cut against reading § II.C as viewpoint-discriminatory. Each answer is independently sufficient.

Every factual claim is drawn from a primary document or named reporting. The site uses an on-page Sources Used widget that counts and lists every source backing each page; the count is derived from real reference data, never typed in. Where the site quotes a court transcript, the quotation is verbatim from the official record with a page-and-line citation. Where the site quotes reporting that itself paraphrases (e.g., the “tainted by misconduct” phrase), the answer is labeled as reported speech and the underlying outlets are named. See the in-progress /documents/sources index for the full source registry.

Yes. Danny uses an AI-assisted research workflow — reading source documents into the model, drafting copy, then verifying every assertion against the primary record. Every quote on the site has been confirmed against the underlying transcript or document. AI is the drafting partner; the verification is human.

The footer carries a “last verified” date that the site updates whenever facts are re-confirmed. Time-sensitive content — fundraiser totals, claims deadlines, court dates — is the most likely to drift and the most aggressively re-checked.

Yes — sharing is encouraged. Pre-written share blurbs for X/Twitter, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Mastodon, and email/text are available on /take-action's Share Panel (Phase E). Quoting the site is fine; the underlying primary sources are what carry the authority. If you reproduce a passage that quotes the dismissal-hearing transcript, please carry the page-and-line citation with it so the receipt travels with the claim.

Email danny@thetatteredrose.com. Corrections backed by a primary source get applied quickly; tips with attached documents get the most attention.