DOJ Warns Milwaukee Judge She’s Not Immune From Criminal Prosecution

Federal prosecutors said in a new filing that a court should reject a Wisconsin judge’s effort to dismiss the obstruction case against her based on judicial immunity.

The FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan on April 25 and charged her with sheltering a defendant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, to avoid arrest by immigration officials.

Prosecutors argue that her move to dismiss the charges violates “well-established law that has long permitted judges to be prosecuted for crimes they commit,” according to court filings.

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The government’s filing also attacks Dugan’s claim that federal agents disrupted active proceedings in her courtroom on April 18 when they arrived to arrest Flores-Ruiz for alleged immigration violations, claiming that it was Dugan “who took it upon herself to interfere with the federal agents’ performance of their responsibilities,” according to the filing.

“Her state judicial post is not a license to engage in conduct that violates federal criminal law,” wrote Richard Frohling, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

Prosecutors allege that “Dugan chose to pause an unrelated case, leave her courtroom, disrupt proceedings in a colleague’s courtroom to commandeer her assistance, and then confront agents in the public hallway.”

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The filing goes on to allege that Dugan directed agents through a set of double doors to the chief judge’s office, even though she knew the chief judge was not in it.

“Dugan quickly returned to her courtroom and, among other things, directed E.F.R.’s attorney to ‘take your client out and come back and get a date’ and then to go through the jury door and ‘down the stairs’ before physically escorting E.F.R. and his attorney into a non-public hallway with access to a stairwell that led to a courthouse exit,” stated the filing, which refers to Flores-Ruiz by his initials.

“She did this all just days after thanking a colleague for providing information which explained that ICE could lawfully make arrests in the courthouse hallway,” the filing adds.

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The complaint is the first time federal prosecutors have charged that Dugan directed the guy to walk “down the stairs,” as well as the first time they have mentioned access to a stairway leading to an exit.

ABC News obtained video from more than two dozen surveillance cameras at the Milwaukee County Circuit Court through a public records request, revealing that the man and his attorney did not take the stairs after their encounter with the judge, but instead exited a private door that led to a public hallway.

Federal officials trail the illegal alien and his counsel as they take the elevator down to the court’s main level, as captured in the footage.

Flores-Ruiz, who was scheduled to appear before Dugan that day on a battery charge, was apprehended outside the courthouse following a brief foot pursuit.

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“Put simply, nothing in the indictment or the anticipated evidence at trial supports Dugan’s assertion that agents ‘disrupted’ the court’s docket; instead, all events arose from Dugan’s unilateral, non-judicial, and unofficial actions in obstructing a federal immigration matter over which she, as a Wisconsin state judge, had no authority,” prosecutors said in the filing.

In the filing, the prosecution argues that even if judicial immunity applied in this case, it would “not help Dugan” because her actions “went well beyond her official role when she endeavored to prevent federal law enforcement officers from executing a valid arrest…in a public area of the Milwaukee County Courthouse.”

Dugan has pleaded not guilty to the allegations, and the trial is scheduled for July 21.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court issued an administrative order in late April directing Judge Dugan to be “temporarily relieved of her official duties.”

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The order reads that Dugan “is temporarily prohibited from exercising the powers of a circuit court judge in the State of Wisconsin.”