The Argument
This page is one-sided by design. It makes the strongest good-faith case for recovering the Broadview Six's legal fees after the government dismissed its own prosecution. There are two routes. The durable one is the Hyde Amendment, a federal fee-shifting statute that lets a prevailing defendant recover fees when the government's position was vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith. The second route, a claim to the Anti-Weaponization Fund, is now blocked by a court and disavowed by the administration; it lives on the Fund page as the contingent argument.
The argument names Kat Abughazaleh most often because she's the most publicly documented of the six, but it is about all of them: Michael Rabbitt, Andre Martin, Catherine Sharp, Brian Straw, and Joselyn Walsh. The obstacles get their own page; read the catch.
Update · June 2, 2026
On June 2, 2026, the defendants did the thing this page argues for. Their attorney Joshua Herman filed a joint Hyde Amendment motion for the four — Rabbitt, Abughazaleh, Martin, and Straw — before Judge Perry, seeking their fees and expenses (docket entry 201); Catherine Sharp filed her own three days later (entry 210). The court treated the June 2 filing as a protective motion and set the briefing: the government's response is due July 7, 2026, with replies July 21. What follows is the project's read of the fight, not a substitute for the filings themselves.
Filing is not winning. The Hyde Amendment standard is demanding, and a court can still say no, for the reasons the catch lays out. The legal bills are due now; an award, if it ever comes, is years and a government appeal away. That gap is the first reason this project exists.
The second reason is the record. A federal prosecution that collapsed on the government's own motion, after the conduct that produced the indictment, should be seen and remembered, not quietly closed.
The third reason is everyone who comes next. The Broadview Six can afford to fight. Most poor and working class people prosecuted in a vexatious, frivolous, or bad-faith way cannot. This page lays out the route in plain words so the next person, and the people after them, can find it.
The full worked-out version of this argument — every obstacle, every case, every answer — is published as the Hyde Brief, a model brief with a downloadable PDF.
The durable route
There is already a federal statute built for exactly this: compensating criminal defendants whose prosecution went wrong. The Hyde Amendment, 18 U.S.C. § 3006A statutory note. It stands on its own, with no settlement fund required. On the May 21, 2026 dismissal-hearing record, defense counsel for Brian Straw did raise a recovery route, telling the court the Broadview Six were, in his words, “now eligible” for “a weaponization fund” and that “people need to see what this DOJ is doing.” Transcript p. 40, ll. 15–17. The route he named on the record was the Anti-Weaponization Fund, the DOJ's own program, not the Hyde Amendment.
On the dismissal-day livestream, a defendant named the Hyde Amendment by name, with the candor it deserves: “There's a thing called the Hyde Amendment. But we are exploring every option, but that's even a very high bar to clear. That's almost impossible to get.” Is the discouragement warranted? Partly. The Hyde Amendment standard is demanding, and there is appellate case law that cuts against these defendants. There is also case law that cuts for them, and primary-source facts on this record that distinguish the case from the leading denials.
The honest reading is “contested.” Walk through it prong by prong below. The standard is the statute's own words. The facts are the dismissal-hearing record. The obstacles and responses are the case law.
The statute, verbatim
“[T]he court, in any criminal case (other than a case in which the defendant is represented by assigned counsel paid for by the public) ... may award to a prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney's fee and other litigation expenses, where the court finds that the position of the United States was vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith, unless the court finds that special circumstances make such an award unjust.”
Hyde Amendment, Pub. L. No. 105-119, § 617, 111 Stat. 2440, 2519 (1997) (codified at 18 U.S.C. § 3006A statutory note).
First: prevailing party
Before any prong, a Hyde claimant must clear 'prevailing party' status — and a dismissal entered purely to sanction misconduct may not confer it.
The standard
“Instead, the dismissal was purely intended to sanction the government's flagrant Brady/Giglio and procedural violations and the misrepresentations used to conceal these violations. As in Campbell, the relief was not based on the merits of the case (except as necessary to calculate prejudice), so Defendants are not 'prevailing parties' under the Hyde Amendment.”
United States v. Chapman, 524 F.3d 1073, 1089 (9th Cir. 2008) (Midpage-verified). 9th Cir.; persuasive, not binding in the 7th.
The obstacle
The three prongs only matter if the defendant is a 'prevailing party' to begin with. Chapman is the most dangerous Hyde authority on this record: it holds that when a court dismisses an indictment with prejudice purely to sanction prosecutorial misconduct — rather than as a judgment on guilt or innocence — the defendant has not 'received at least some relief on the merits' and is not a prevailing party, so the court can deny fees without ever reaching whether the prosecution was vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith. The Broadview Six dismissal-with-prejudice came on the government's own Rule 48(a) motion after the court identified grand-jury misconduct on in-camera review — close to the posture Chapman describes. This is the obstacle the route has to clear first.
The response
The answer is in the record, not in a presumption. This case did not end on a bare misconduct sanction divorced from the merits. The first grand-jury session returned a no bill — a neutral body's merits judgment that the evidence did not support the charge. The felony conspiracy count was abandoned before trial. What remained was a misdemeanor information that alleged no specific conduct, dismissed with prejudice with no refiling. A defendant who walks away with the felony gone, a no-bill on the record, and the charge extinguished for good has obtained relief that goes to the merits of the prosecution, not only to the prosecutor's conduct — which is the showing Chapman requires. And Chapman is Ninth Circuit: in the Northern District of Illinois it is persuasive reasoning, not binding law. The point is not that this gate is easy. It is that the route has to confront it, and on these facts there is an argument through it.
Without reasonable or probable cause or excuse.
The standard
“[A] determination that a prosecution was 'vexatious' for the purposes of the Hyde Amendment requires both a showing that the criminal case was objectively deficient, in that it lacked either legal merit or factual foundation, and a showing that the government's conduct, when viewed objectively, manifests maliciousness or an intent to harass or annoy.”
United States v. Knott, 256 F.3d 20, 29 (1st Cir. 2001) (Midpage-verified).
The Broadview Six facts
The first session of the grand jury (October 9, 2025) returned a no bill. The government did not convene a fresh panel; the U.S. Attorney chose to return to the same grand-jury body. Across three sessions, with dissenting jurors absent on the third, the indictment was returned. The District Court later identified infirmities in the legal instructions given to the first session as well.
“the grand jury returned a no bill that day”
Transcript p. 32, ll. 1–2 (AUSA Skiba) and p. 20, ll. 8–11 (Hon. April M. Perry).
The lead AUSA, asked about the first of four grand-jury problems Judge Perry had flagged, conceded on the record that the prosecutor's vouching to the grand jurors was, at a minimum, arguably misconduct.
“What I did not know then, and what only became apparent as we were discussing dismissing these charges, is that's beyond personal style, and that is, at a minimum, arguably misconduct.”
Transcript p. 31, ll. 10–13 (AUSA Skiba).
The District Court on the misconduct identified in the grand-jury transcripts.
“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 (Hon. April M. Perry).
Pattern across the Northern District of Illinois: Judge Fuentes's November 20, 2025 opinion in U.S. v. Briggs cataloged five Broadview-arrest cases in which affiants swore video corroborated the charges; the court noted at least three grand-jury no-bills district-wide under Operation Midway Blitz (one — Collins/Robledo — named in the opinion).
U.S. v. Briggs, opinionId 1000459551153 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 20, 2025) (CourtListener docket 71489170); see also Transcript p. 5, ll. 21–23 and p. 7, ll. 15–19 (intervenor counsel summarizing the opinion).
The obstacle · Shaygan and Reyes-Romero
Courts read “position of the United States” as the prosecution viewed as an inclusive whole, not as discrete acts of misconduct inside an otherwise reasonable prosecution. The Eleventh Circuit panel held that the district court “abused its discretion when it imposed sanctions ... for a prosecution that was objectively reasonable.” Judge Pryor, defending that holding in the denial of rehearing en banc, distilled it: “the Hyde Amendment is concerned with wrongful prosecutions, not wrongs that occur during objectively reasonable prosecutions.” The Third Circuit reads the statute the same way.
United States v. Shaygan, 676 F.3d 1237, 1239 (11th Cir. 2012) (Pryor, J., respecting denial of rehearing en banc); see also United States v. Shaygan, 652 F.3d 1297 (11th Cir. 2011) (panel opinion, same rule as core holding); USA v. Reyes-Romero, 959 F.3d 80 (3d Cir. 2020) (Midpage-verified).
The response
The misconduct here is not inside an otherwise reasonable prosecution. It is what made the indictment possible at all. The first grand jury said no. The case had to be re-presented. The U.S. Attorney's own AUSA conceded the conduct used to secure the indictment was, at minimum, arguably misconduct. The government's position at the charging stage is what is in question, not its position during an otherwise sound prosecution.
The reckoning
Before any of the three prongs, the Hyde Amendment asks a prior question: is the defendant a “prevailing party” at all? The hardest answer to that question is United States v. Chapman, 524 F.3d 1073 (9th Cir. 2008) — which holds that a dismissal entered purely to sanction prosecutorial misconduct, rather than as a judgment on the merits, may not confer prevailing-party status, so a court can deny fees without ever reaching vexatious, frivolous, or bad faith. The Hyde Explorer above answers it at the threshold question, before any prong. (Chapman is Ninth Circuit; here, in the Seventh, it is persuasive, not binding.)
The Eleventh Circuit's Shayganopinion and the Third Circuit's Reyes-Romero both read the Hyde Amendment narrowly. They say the same thing in slightly different words: the statute targets wrongful prosecutions, not wrongs that happen inside otherwise reasonable prosecutions. The Eleventh Circuit put it plainly: “The Hyde Amendment is concerned with wrongful prosecutions, not wrongs that occur during objectively reasonable prosecutions.” United States v. Shaygan, 676 F.3d 1237, 1239 (11th Cir. 2012) (Pryor, J., respecting denial of rehearing en banc); see also United States v. Shaygan, 652 F.3d 1297, 1313–14 (11th Cir. 2011) (panel opinion, same rule as a core holding).
That is the load-bearing obstacle. If a court treats the Broadview Six prosecution as a generally reasonable attempt to charge a federal conspiracy that happened to involve serious misconduct, the Hyde Amendment will likely not reach it. The misconduct will instead feed traditional sanctions, suppression rulings, OPR referrals, and bar complaints. The Fourth Circuit's Bunn decision is the cold version of this principle: a prosecutor who failed to listen to a backup audio recording of grand-jury proceedings before charging was found to be merely negligent, not in bad faith.
The response is on this record. The misconduct here was not inside an otherwise reasonable prosecution. It was the misconduct that obtainedthe indictment. The grand jury returned a no bill at its first session. The same body had to be brought back, with dissenting jurors absent, before an indictment issued on the third session. AUSA Skiba, asked about the first of four grand-jury problems Judge Perry had flagged, conceded on the record that the prosecutor's vouching to the grand jurors was “at a minimum, arguably misconduct.” Transcript p. 31, ll. 10–13. Two of the other problems Perry identified — the excusing of dissenting grand jurors and the substantive ex parte communications — are the more load-bearing ones for the Hyde “wrongful prosecution” standard. That fact pattern separates this record from Shaygan (a probable-cause prosecution with later witness-preparation misconduct) and from Bunn (a charge supported by a court reporter's transcript and the foreman's contemporaneous testimony).
It is still contested. The site's posture: don't oversell it, don't underclaim it. The case is genuinely winnable on these facts and the case is genuinely hard to win. Both are true.
The threshold, your call
— ContestedStrength: contested.The project's published label. Hyde Brief, Part I.
Scope note: the May 21 dismissal covered the four defendants then before the court (Tr. 59:11–14). The brief treats prevailing-party status as per-defendant.
No tallies here. We can't count readers yet, and we won't invent numbers. This asks how you read the record, and it answers back.
Where this goes
Your answer stayed on your device. Nothing was sent, because there is nowhere to send it yet. We won't show you a tally we didn't count. The live version is designed: counts of how readers weigh these arguments, shown once they exist, and the grand-jury transcripts put through the same receipt-checked reading. Funding decides how fast that arrives. This wiki is one person and a public repo.
This funds the wiki, not the Broadview Six. Their defense funds are separate.
Two routes, honestly compared
The Hyde Amendment and the Anti-Weaponization Fund are different tools, and they were never mutually exclusive. The Fund was built to reach relief the Hyde Amendment cannot. But as of June 2026 the Fund is blocked by a court order, and the administration has said it will not move forward with it. The durable route, the one that does not depend on a fund the government can switch off, is the statute. Here is the honest comparison.
The Fund route · Scope of recovery
The Hyde Amendment, by its text, awards “a reasonable attorney's fee and other litigation expenses.” That is fees and costs. The Settlement Agreement's § V.D directs the Fund's review of actual damagesas one of six factors, which the Fund's panel may treat as reputational, professional, and opportunity-cost. For Kat in particular, a documented congressional-primary loss mid-prosecution is the kind of damage Hyde cannot reach.
The Fund route · Time horizon
A Hyde Amendment claim is a motion, sometimes with discovery, sometimes with an evidentiary hearing, almost always with a government appeal if the defendant wins. The Fund was supposed to be quicker, with a claims window set to close in December 2028. That window never opened: a court blocked the Fund before any panel was seated, and the administration has since said it will not move forward. The motion is the route that actually exists. Either way, the legal-defense bills the three defendant fundraisers are paying down are compounding now.
The Fund route · All six under one principle
The Hyde Amendment is per-defendant. Each defendant must show, with their own invoices and their own net-worth showing, that the government's position in theirprosecution was vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith. The Fund's eligibility argument is common: one set of operative facts, one set of legal claims, all six covered by the same § V.C showing.
The Fund route · No net-worth cap
The First Circuit's Knottdecision read the Hyde Amendment's reference to EAJA “procedures and limitations” to incorporate EAJA § 2412(d)'s eligibility ceilings, including the $2 million net-worth limit for individual claimants and the 500-employee / $7 million cap for entities. The Anti-Weaponization Fund has no analogous cap. For most of the Broadview Six this likely doesn't bind, but it is one more procedural inefficiency the Fund route avoids by design.
The bills are real regardless
The Anti-Weaponization Fund argument is preserved on the Fund page because it was always conditional on the Fund being valid, and it still shows something true: by the fund's own stated rules, the Broadview Six qualified. The administration built that fund, a court blocked it, and the administration itself said it would not move forward. The Hyde Amendment does not depend on any of that. Whichever route the defendants and their counsel pursue, the legal debt the three defendant fundraisers are paying down is real and immediate.
Read next — the obstacles
The argument above is one-sided. The obstacles are real: the partisan-definition counterargument, the unreviewable panel, and the § V.B waiver that trades away the right to sue. A compelling brief and a smart legal move are not the same thing.
Read next — the precedent question
The DOJ named one case as the Fund's “legal precedent” — Keepseagle v. Vilsack. The analogy does not hold. But the principle behind Keepseagle — serve the real victims, by neutral criteria — is itself the argument for paying the Six.
Why this page exists
Whether Kat, Michael Rabbitt, Brian Straw, and the other Broadview Six defendants pursue the Hyde Amendment, some other claim, or none at all, they have already paid lawyers, for months, to fight a case the federal government itself dismissed. Their legal-defense funds are the most direct way to help.
