Another day means another embarrassing whiff for the insular, professionally wrong liberal legal commentariat.
On Thursday, Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan was found guilty of impeding a proceeding, a felony that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. For the uninitiated: the 66-year-old Dugan was arrested on April 25 of this year for her role in helping an illegal immigrant evade authorities.
On April 18, 30-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz was in Dugan’s courtroom for a hearing over battery and domestic abuse charges filed against him. According to charging documents against Dugan, the judge became “visibly upset and had a confrontational, angry demeanor” after learning that immigration, DEA, and FBI agents had come to take Flores-Ruiz into custody at the courthouse, and instructed the agents to speak with Chief Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Carl Ashley.
After that, Dugan instructed Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to leave through the “jury door” to avoid the agents. FBI Director Kash Patel celebrated her arrest in a social media post explaining that “We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest.”
“Thankfully, our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public,” continued Patel.
The reaction from progressives was apoplectic.
Joyce Vance, a U.S. attorney under President Barack Obama — now there’s a scary thought — and MS NOW legal analyst, quickly resorted to a Nazi comparison. From her Civil Discourse Substack:
On Friday, we saw the arrest of a state court judge in Wisconsin. She was arrested at her courthouse and charged with interfering with an immigration arrest. The message is clear: If they can arrest judges, no one is safe.
I will have a lot to say about the case later on today, but in advance, I want to refer you to the previous post; one that is now sadly predictive of where we are. It’s titled, “When They Come for the Judges.”
I wrote:
I am reminded again, as we are likely to be endlessly over the course of the next few months, of the words of the German pastor and theologian Martin Niemöller, who wrote:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
The words reflected his early complicity in Nazi Germany and later change of heart.
It seems like an extreme example. But they are coming for the judges. And not just the judges. Already they have come for federal employees, transgender people, immigrants, lawyers, the press, epidemiologists, scientists, and more.
The time for all of us to speak up and join forces to protect each other is now, before it is too late.
Andrew Weissmann, another former federal prosecutor-turned-MS NOW embarrassment, characterized Dugan’s arrest as “a continuation of the assault on the judiciary,” arguing that it was meant to have “this sort of terrorizing effect.”
Lincoln Project alum George Conway called the case against Dugan “bullsh*t.”
And for The Atlantic, former federal judge J. Michael Luttig declared that the “arrest and prosecution of judges on such specious charges is where rule by law ends and tyranny begins.”
One of the only mainstream legal experts to tell his audience the truth about the matter was, predictably, CNN’s Elie Honig.
“Looking at the complaint — let’s strip the politics out of it — this is a crime,” said Honig, who described Dugan’s actions as outlined in the criminal complaint as “textbook obstruction” in the immediate aftermath of her arrest.
To his great credit, Honig even pilloried his hysterical peers for the “hypocrisy” they demonstrated by engaging in “garment-renting” over Dugan after “gravely intoning when Donald Trump got arrested, ‘No man is above the law.””
“Well, no judge is above the law, either,” he added.
Dugan’s conviction serves as yet another reminder that so much of legal media has been conquered by audience capture, and is composed of a politically-motivated cohort of Democrats delivering applause lines for other Democrats. Whether they’re right or wrong is of no consequence to them or their bosses, so long as it serves as comfort food to those who want to be reassured rather than informed.
Honig is a rare bird because he follows the facts wherever they may lead — and that’s a sad commentary on his profession.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
