The Wisconsin judge-turned-activist Hannah Dugan, who was recently convicted of felony obstruction, has resigned from her office amid mounting pressure from GOP lawmakers.
Dugan submitted her resignation letter to Gov. Tony Evers on Saturday. Republican leaders in the Wisconsin Legislature told her to either resign or face impeachment after her Dec. 18 conviction.
A jury found the Milwaukee County Judge guilty of obstruction for interfering with an immigration arrest at the Milwaukee County Courthouse.
The embattled judge overstepped her authority — and exhibited blatant bias for a defendant in her court — related to an incident in April that was caught on camera. She left her courtroom wearing her robe, confronted federal immigration agents in the hallway, and helped an illegal immigrant avoid those agents in the courthouse.
In her letter of resignation, Dugan defended her treatment of all people with dignity and respect.
She claimed her legal troubles are “too large of a distraction” to continue acting as a judge, The Washington Times reported.
Wisconsin Republicans demanded that Dugan resign immediately after her conviction. They cited state law that forbids anyone who has been convicted of a felony from serving as a judge.
Dugan was suspended with pay by the Wisconsin Supreme Court after her arrest by FBI agents in April. Republican lawmakers also introduced a bill that would withhold pay for suspended judges.
Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, praised Dugan’s decision to resign.
“I’m glad Dugan did the right thing by resigning and followed the clear direction from the Wisconsin Constitution,” Vos said.
In a joint statement following the verdict, Vos and Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August, also a Republican, called out her lack of impartiality and judicial ethics.
“Wisconsinites deserve to know that their judiciary is impartial and that justice is blind,” they said. “Judge Hannah Dugan is neither, and her privilege of serving the people of Wisconsin has come to an end.”
Clinton-appointee U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman has not yet scheduled a sentencing date for Dugan.
Her high-powered legal team signaled they would appeal the decision or ask Adelman to set aside Dugan’s guilty verdict. The maximum penalty would be five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
“As you know, I am the subject of unprecedented federal legal proceedings, which are far from concluded but which present immense and complex challenges that threaten the independence of our judiciary,” Dugan wrote in her letter. “I am pursuing this fight for myself and for our independent judiciary.”
Dugan’s defense team and Democrats contend the Trump administration brought the federal charges “to make an example of Dugan.”
Meanwhile, activist judges across the country have tried to derail the Trump administration’s immigration and deportation agenda by siding with immigration advocates and overstepping their judicial authority.
“The facts are that giving preferential treatment to illegal immigrants is not treating American citizens with dignity or respect, and she was forced to leave her office in disgrace,” The Patriot Post noted.
Dugan added that the people of Milwaukee County “deserve to start the year with a judge on the bench in Milwaukee County Branch 31 rather than have the fate of that Court rest in a partisan fight in the state Legislature,” the Wisconsin Examiner reported.
A jury of seven men and five women handed down a split verdict on Dec. 18, following a four-day trial at the Federal Courthouse in Milwaukee.
Dugan was convicted for a felony charge that she obstructed or impeded a proceeding before a U.S. department or agency. The jury acquitted her on a misdemeanor count tied to concealing an individual from discovery and arrest.
In her resignation letter, Dugan wrote that over the past decade she handled thousands of cases with “a commitment to treat all persons with dignity and respect, to act justly, deliberately and consistently, and to maintain a courtroom with the decorum and safety the public deserves.”
The federal charges stem from Dugan’s actions on April 18, when she left her courtroom and confronted ICE officers and other plain-clothes agents in the hallway of the courthouse.
They were there to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who has since been deported by the Trump administration. Flores-Ruiz was scheduled to appear in Dugan’s court for a pre-trial hearing related to local domestic violence and battery charges.
Flores-Ruiz had a violent history, including charges for strangulation and suffocation, battery and domestic abuse, and had illegally entered the United States twice.
Per court documents and surveillance footage, Dugan confronted the agents and ordered them to the chief judge’s office down the hall. She told them their administrative warrant wasn’t sufficient grounds to arrest Flores-Ruiz.
Dugan then went back to court and rescheduled Flores-Ruiz’s hearing, even though witnesses were there, and instructed him and his attorney to leave her courtroom out a hallway door reserved for jurors.
John Vaudreuil, a former U.S. attorney in Madison, spoke to the Associated Press and said Dugan faces an uphill fight to overturn the verdict.
Vaudreuil wasn’t surprised to see a split verdict, saying “The two charges gave them two different ways to look at the evidence.” Dugan didn’t outright conceal the immigrant, like hiding him in her house, likely leading to the acquittal for the misdemeanor count tied to concealing an individual from discovery and arrest.
Local outlet WISN 12 News reported that Dugan is likely to keep her state pension despite the felony conviction.
A spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds, the state agency that administers state pensions and other benefits, wouldn’t comment on Dugan’s case specifically, but said state law does not require an individual to forfeit their pension “because of being terminated or criminal charges.”
