Following weeks of Democratic accusations of judicial intimidation and claims about an improper arrest, our friends at Blaze media report a federal grand jury determined Tuesday that there was, after all, sufficient evidence to indict Dugan on charges of concealing a person from arrest and obstruction of the law.
Dugan's lawyers quickly filed a motion to dismiss the case Wednesday, arguing that there’s no legal basis for it.
Her attorneys argue in their motion that her conduct on the day in question amounted to directing people’s movement in and around her courtroom, and that she enjoys legal immunity for official acts she performs as a judge. They cite last year’s US Supreme Court ruling in President Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case that found that former presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts that fall within their “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” and are presumptively entitled to immunity for all official acts.
However, the indictment alleges that Dugan committed multiple "affirmative acts" to assist Eduardo Flores-Ruiz (EFR) evade arrest following his pre-trial April 18 appearance in her courtroom, including:
- confronting members of an ICE task force and "falsely telling them they needed a judicial warrant to effectuate the arrest of E.F.R.";
- directing all members of the task force to leave the public hallway outside her courtroom and to go to the chief judge's office;
- addressing the illegal alien's criminal case off the record while ICE agents were waiting in the chief judge's office;
- "directing E.F.R. and his counsel to exit Courtroom 615 through a non-public jury door"; and
- advising Flores-Ruiz's lawyer that the illegal alien could appear by Zoom for his next court date.
Since Trump took office early this year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested several people inside the Milwaukee County courthouse.
“The reasons for this include not only the fact that law enforcement knows the location at which the wanted individual should be located but also the fact that the wanted individual would have entered through a security checkpoint and thus unarmed, minimizing the risk of injury to law enforcement, the public, and the wanted individual,” the FBI’s affidavit said according to reporting by Wisconsin Public Radio.
Attorney General Pam Bondi noted in an interview last month that both of Flores-Ruiz's alleged victims had to be hospitalized. “It doesn’t matter what line of work you are in, if you break the law, we will follow the facts and we will prosecute you,” Ms. Bondi said in a video reported by the New York Times.
The state Supreme Court suspended Dugan from the bench last month, saying the move was necessary to preserve public confidence in the judiciary. A reserve judge is filling in for her.
- District Court Judges
- Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan
- ICE
- Illegal immigration
- Grand Jury Indictment
- Judicial Activism
- FBI arrest
- Concealing from arrest
- Legal immunity
- Official acts
- Eduardo Flores-Ruiz
- Attorney General Pam Bondi
