Did a Judge Obstruct Justice?

In Donald Trump’s worldview, there are four kinds of judges: “correct thinking” judges like Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Aileen Cannon down in Florida, all of whom are in the tank for him; judges he appointed whom he thinks owe him something like Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett; centrist judges who take a middle ground like Chief Justice John Roberts who don’t matter because he plans to defy their orders anyway; and “deranged” judges like Federal District Court Judge James Boasberg and Wisconsin state court judge Hannah Dugan, who have some understanding of due process, empathy for the marginalized, and a willingness to temper justice with mercy. 

I will not comment on the charges leveled at Judge Dugan, however flimsy they look on paper. She is accused of serious offenses, and until recently, we resolved these issues in a court of law not on X or Fox News as the FBI Director and Attorney General have chosen. Obstruction of proceedings before a department or agency of the United States, carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison, and concealing a person to prevent arrest, which carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail, are not mere peccadillos. 

The story unfolds with efforts by federal agents to arrest a Mexican national, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, accused of illegally reentering the United States after being deported. He had not been indicted, and the warrant for his arrest was an administrative warrant issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), not a warrant issued by a federal judge. Flores-Ruiz was in Judge Dugan’s courtroom on state misdemeanor assault charges. He must face the music in the cases brought against him.  

Judge Dugan is a highly respected judge with a lifetime of advocacy as a lawyer for the underserved and marginalized. If this be derangement, make the most of it.  

Unlike Donald Trump, judges are not above the law. A small number may be crooks, subject to the sins of the flesh, but criminal cases against them have been few and far between. Martin Manton, Chief Judge of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, was charged with selling justice in 1938. He was acquitted of bribery but convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and served 19 months in federal prison. When I was in law school, a respected state court judge, J. Vincent Keogh, was convicted of conspiring to obstruct justice in 1962. And in our long history, the House of Representatives impeached fifteen federal judges. Of these, the Senate subsequently convicted eight and removed them from office. 

What raises hackles is that the Trump administration has weaponized the law against Judge Dugan and politicized her case. Huzzahs and a vulpine relish from Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI panjandrum Kash Patel followed Dugan’s arrest. 

Judges today are undoubtedly contemplating what pretexts might be used to drag them from the bench and clap them in irons if the attorney general decides she doesn’t like their rulings. 

Consider the disturbing remarks of Attorney General Pam Bondi: 

“What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” Bondi told Fox News,  commenting on the judge’s arrest.  

“They’re deranged. I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not. We are sending a very strong message today: If you are harboring a fugitive, we don’t care who you are. If you are helping hide one, if you are giving a [gang] member guns, anyone who is illegally in this country, we will come after you, and we will prosecute you. We will find you.” 

And FBI director Kash Patel chimed in, posting a photo on X of the judge in handcuffs, followed by the ironically taunting statement, “No one is above the law.”

What shocks the conscience is that Judge Dugan was presiding in her courtroom when the agents violated that space to effect an arrest in a manner I never saw or heard of in my years as a federal prosecutor. 

We don’t know why Dugan directed Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer to go out the side door of her courtroom and back out to the main hall. (She did not take him out a fire escape or through the building’s boiler room. It did not resemble Steve McQueen trying to motorcycle his way out of a German prisoner of war camp in The Great Escape.) The main hall is where Dugan and Flores-Ruiz ended up and where agents saw them, following them out of the courthouse. Seems like a case of “no harm, no foul.” But we must reserve judgment until the case proceeds.  

Getting rid of judges who opposed executive overreach is a shopworn tool in the dictator’s chest. The “deranged” group, he says, should be impeached. If that won’t work, he wants them arrested in their courtrooms and led off in manacles.  

Authoritarian rulers must control the judiciary, their natural enemy. Hitler (I know MAGAs detest the Hitler analogy, however apt), Josef Stalin, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and Reçep Erdogan in Turkey all removed judges they didn’t like.  

Americans understand how outrageous this is. In Wisconsin, hundreds gathered outside the FBI building in St. Francis, a small city in Wisconsin’s Milwaukee County, following Dugan’s arrest. One of the demonstrators said, “All of the things that make America great are being attacked.” There were protests in other cities, too.  

Why was the Judge arrested? Why was she handcuffed? Why arrest her at the courthouse? These questions try our souls.  

The government must prove that Judge Dugan intended to obstruct justice when she permitted the defendant to leave her courtroom through the side door. This seems like an insurmountable hurdle. 

As for harboring a fugitive, part of what the government must prove involves establishing whether Judge Dugan harbored or concealed the fugitive. The cases define harboring as giving someone a place to stay or caring for them while hiding from law enforcement, as Dr. Mudd did for John Wilkes Booth. Can a judge harbor a fugitive in a public courtroom? Without more evidence, Bondi’s case will die on the vine. 

As his first 100 days in office close, President Donald Trump finds his approval rating sinking, with majority opposition to major initiatives and perceptions that his administration is seeking to avoid complying with federal court orders. The poll shows that 39 percent of adult Americans approve of how Trump is handling his job, compared with 55 percent who disapprove, including 44 percent who disapprove strongly. In February, those numbers were 45 percent positive and 53 percent negative. No wonder and the last straw may be his assault on the judiciary, with many worried about what the case could mean for America’s future. 

Trump is coming for the judges. We must stand with them. 

The post Did a Judge Obstruct Justice? appeared first on Washington Monthly.