Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was indicted by a federal grand jury in May on charges of concealing a person from arrest and obstruction of the law.
Dugan — who has been characterized by Democratic lawmakers both as a courtroom hero and as a victim of the Trump administration — is desperate to avoid going to trial for allegedly helping Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an illegal alien from Mexico charged with three misdemeanor counts of battery, get away from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Dugan, whose actions on April 18 were largely caught on courthouse cameras, evidently figured the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States condemned by Democrats last summer was her ticket out of trouble.
‘This, however, is not a civil case.’
Citing the court’s determination that the president “may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts,” lawyers for the Milwaukee judge claimed in a May 14 motion to dismiss the case that “the government cannot prosecute Judge Dugan because she is entitled to judicial immunity for her official acts.” Dugan’s lawyers suggested further that her prosecution violates the limits of federal power under the 10th Amendment.
A federal judge suggested otherwise this week.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Joseph recommended on Monday that Dugan’s motion to dismiss be denied and torpedoed the Milwaukee judge’s arguments for dismissal one by one.
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“It is well-established and undisputed that judges have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits for monetary damages when engaging in judicial acts,” wrote Joseph. “This, however, is not a civil case. And review of the case law does not show an extension of this established doctrine to the criminal context.”
‘Trump says nothing about criminal immunity for judicial acts.’
“Does judicial immunity shield Dugan from prosecution because the indictment alleges she violated federal criminal law while performing judicial duties? The answer is no,” wrote Joseph.
The federal judge underscored that there is “no firmly established absolute judicial immunity barring criminal prosecution of judges for judicial acts.”
Joseph also made mince meat out of Dugan’s attempt to use Trump to avoid criminal prosecution for alleged improper conduct within her courtroom.
“While Dugan asserts that Trump simply extended to the president the same immunity from prosecution that judges already have, this argument makes a leap too far. Trump says nothing about criminal immunity for judicial acts,” wrote Joseph.
“And in Fitzgerald, while the Supreme Court looked to the historical jurisprudence regarding civil judicial immunity, the Court was clear that the grant of absolute immunity for civil damages for ‘outer perimeter’ acts of the president was due to the ‘special nature of the president’s constitutional office and functions,'” added Joseph.
Joseph further recommended that the court declines Dugan’s invitation to dismiss the indictment on the canon of constitutional avoidance.
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While the U.S. magistrate judge made abundantly clear that Dugan’s motion to dismiss has no legs to stand on, the decision rests with U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman.
As Blaze News previously reported, Adelman is a Clinton-appointed U.S. district judge and a former Democratic state senator with a history of attacking President Donald Trump, claiming, for instance, that the president makes no effort “to enact policies beneficial to the general public” and behaves like an “autocrat.”
Dugan, relieved of her duties as a judge in April by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, was originally scheduled to go to trial later this month, but Adelman took the trial date off the calendar last month pending the outcome of her motion to dismiss.
“We are disappointed in the magistrate judge’s non-binding recommendation, and we will appeal it,” Dugan attorney Steven Biskupic said in a statement obtained by the Associated Press. “This is only one step in what we expect will be a long journey to preserve the independence and integrity of our courts.”
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Hannah dugan, Wisconsin, Immigration and customs enforcement officials, Ice, Department of justice, Felony, Evasion, Aiding, Illegal alien, Illegal immigration, Milwaukee, Dugan, Politics