The FBI’s arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan is a bid to silence dissent | Moira Donegan
The Trump administration is making an example of the Milwaukee judge to intimidate critics and opponents
On Friday, the Trump administration dramatically escalated its assault on the courts when the FBI arrested Hannah Dugan, a county circuit court judge handling misdemeanors in Milwaukee – allegedly for helping an undocumented man avoid abduction by Ice agents outside her courtroom. The arrest, a highly publicized and dramatic move from the Trump administration, seemed designed to elicit fear among judges, government bureaucrats, and ordinary Americans that any effort to slow, impede, or merely not facilitate the administration’s mass kidnapping and deportation efforts will lead to swift, forceful, and disproportionate punishment by Trump allies. Her arrest may be the opening salvo of a broader Trump assault on judges.
Even if you believe the FBI’s allegations, their account of Dugan’s alleged misconduct is trivial and flimsy, wholly undeserving of the administration’s sadistically disproportionate response. The FBI claims that earlier this month, on 17 April, when an undocumented man was in Dugan’s Milwaukee courtroom charged with misdemeanor battery, she learned that Ice agents were waiting in a public hallway to arrest him. Later, in her courtroom, when she saw the defendant moving toward a main exit, she told the man, “Wait, come with me,” and directed him towards a side door instead. (He was captured by Ice shortly thereafter.) The FBI arrested her in her courtroom and has indicted her on two federal felony charges: obstruction and “concealing an individual”.
Continue reading...© Photograph: Lee Matz/AP
© Photograph: Lee Matz/AP