Federal jury convicts Milwaukee judge who obstructed ICE (12-19-2025--Hour2)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet, And again, thank you so much for your support. So yesterday I brought you the story of the trial of Judge Hannah Dugan. You remember Hannah Dugan. She's the judge up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who helped a criminal illegal alien escape out of the back of her courtroom while she created a distraction for the Ice agents out in the hallway and then enlisted the help of another judge unbeknownst to that other judge, in order to send the Ice agents down the hall to get some permission slip from the chief judge, which they did not actually need to do. So Judge Dougan, as I went over yesterday, she lied to her fellow judge to help her in this deception. She lied to the Chief Deputy when she told the chief deputy that the ICE agents weren't allowed to make any arrests in the hallways. They actually are, it's a public space. They were allowed to do that. And then she lied about how there was some sort of protocols about not making arrests in courtrooms and such, and then she also lied about whether she had engaged in the deception. So just lies upon lies, deception upon deception, and she was charged two charges against her. One was for misdemeanor concealment and the other was felony obstruction. And the Wisconsin Examiner has been following the trial. It's been going on for the whole week, and I suspected that the defense was going to probably wrap up pretty quickly because there's really not a lot you can do or say to disprove the video evidence and the witness testimony and everybody that was part of this deception. They were all hauled into court. And by the way, this was a federal court. This was not a state court. If it was a state court, you'd have been pulling from a smaller jury pool in Milwaukee, probably more lefty, you know, But it being a federal trial, you're pulling in people from the federal district, So there are people outside of the state district, right, so they had more people on the jury than just from Milwaukee. So, after six hours of deliberation, a federal jury found Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan guilty of the felony obstruction, but not guilty of the misdemeanor concealing a person from federal immigration law enforcement. There's some technical reason for that that the jury got hung up on. I'll tell you about it. But it's like, the more serious charge is the federal charge. Okay. Again from the Wisconsin Examiner. The high profile federal trial stemmed from Dugan's interaction with federal agents who came to her court him to arrest a man who was appearing before her on April eighteenth, which, by the way, this came out in trial as well, that Dugan was claiming that they can't make an arrest in a courtroom, but then other judges were like, no, yeah, they can. It happens all the time. People get arrested in the courtroom all the time. In fact, it's a pretty safe place to do an arrest, right because you've got the bailiffs that are there, you got the deputies that are in the courtroom providing security, right, so you know they're going to be there, so it's you got extra It's like a force multiplier kind of a thing. The assistant US attorney Kelly Brown Watska did the closing arguments. This was yesterday, and she said to the jury that you don't have to agree with immigration enforcement policy to see that this was wrong. You just have to agree that the law applies equally to everyone. Correct. That's the key. This is not a trial about the immigration law. It's about whether or not a law was violated, which it clearly was. As I went over yesterday when we were going through the testimony and all of that, Dugan's case gained national attention with her defense attorneys saying and closing arguments that the federal government was trying to make an example of her, trying to make an example of the sixty six year old judge in an effort to crush those who try to stand up to federal power, which is confirmation of everything that I have been saying this whole argument. Thank you. Defense attorney for his name is Jason Luckzak or lou Zach Luchak. Anyway, thank you Jason for confirming what I have been saying. This is about nollfication. This is about local and state officials attempting to nullify a federal law because they don't agree with the law. And this has been this has been building and is it is it is now we are in like a well, I don't want to say we're in the the rolling boil phase yet, right, because that's the thing too, Like people are, oh, this has been simmering. But in order to simmer, you got to boil first, don't you right? Don't you have to boil first? You could simmer first. I thought you'd bring it to a boil and then you reduce the heat to simmer. Can you go either way with that? I don't know. Maybe there's a cook out there that can that can explain whether you can simmer before boiling. Maybe you can't. Really it doesn't matter for the for the purpose of this story. I am way down a rabbit hole here. But this issue has been has has been slowly building to a boil, if you will, or a simmer, and it's been slowly building because they the people who do not want to see federal immigration law enforced as it is written, are unable or unwilling to change the federal law. If you don't like the law, then you pass a different law, or you repeal the law you don't like. See, but that takes work. Oh my gosh, you mean I gotta do something as a lawmaker, Like I was just wanting to go down, stand on the floor, speak to an empty chamber and get a TikTok video so I can send it out in fundraise. And then hit happy hour. Right, Legislating take some work, takes some time. It's supposed to, by the way, that's the point. That's why our system is slow. You're not supposed to be, you know, rushing headlong into making new law based on emotion. Right, You're it's supposed to. That's why we have the two houses of Congress. You have the House Representative, we have the Senate. Right, we have the two chambers. I should say, that's why we have too. You have one that is the House, like the boiling pass passions of the of the populace, that's most closest to the people. The districts are smaller, right, you got more members two year terms over in the Senate. It's supposed to be a deliberative body. They're on six year terms. They originally were supposed to represent the interests of the state, but as I forget, it was that said it's the it's the saucer that cools the hot tea or whatever, because apparently back in the days when people drank tea because they were still kind of British, I suspect, and so the idea was you would pour the tea into the saucer and so that would cool the tea and then you could drink it. But that always seemed weird to me because then you're drinking the tea out of a saucer, which seems like a rep to just douse all of the tea on your on your chest, you know. But I've never tried it, so I don't know. It just seems like not an ideal situation to drink. But for cooling purposes it does make sense, that's the point. But they don't want to go through the process of changing the law, so they're trying to nullify. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. 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They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. So AI tells me that you can simmer without boiling. In fact, simmering is defined as cooking at a temperature just below the boiling point of water, typically between one hundred and eighty five degrees fahrenheit and two hundred and five degrees fahrenheit. I'm not even going to give you the celsius readings because that's crap. Where American, this method involves gentle bubbling with small by the way, I'll just mean that from just like a you know, like a culturally insensitive thing like where Americans, and Fahrenheit's better. But fahrenheit is better, particularly when you're trying to like tell people how cold or warm it is outside, because a degree in celsius it feels a lot different, you know, going up two degrees celsius is the difference between like, you know, shorts and sweaters. You know, so fahrenheit is it's more the degrees are smaller, and so it feels like you'll know the difference with you know, a ten degrees swing in fahrenheit versus a ten degrees swing in celsius. That could kill you in celsius. Right, So anyway, now the metric system I am open to, but I digress. So you can simmer without boiling. It just depends on what you're trying to do. But it says here rolling blah blah blah blah. To achieve this, you bring the liquid to a boil first, then reduce the heat to a lower constant intensity to maintain a steady simmer. That's how I've always done it. I always boil everything first. But maybe that's why I'm not such a great cook. Okay, regarding the Senate, I see the helly in is upset that on the text line that I used the uh I used that old. The Senate is the saucer to use to cool hot tea symbolizing its role in tempering hasty legislation passed by the House. It's often attributed to George Washington during a breakfast conversation. So the story goes with Thomas Jefferson, who had returned from France and questioned the need for a Senate. Washington asked why Jefferson had poured his coffee into a saucer, and Jefferson said that it was to cool the drink. Washington said, uh, we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it. Now, this has become a staple of American political lore, but its historical accuracy is uncertain. So when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. So I'm sticking with the saucer Coolidge story. But that's the point. Legislation is supposed to be difficult to pass, so it it reduces the passions and the emotionalism when something happens and people rush in to say, can't somebody do something, and then like I'm gonna pass a bill, and everybody rushes and passes a bill very quickly, and then it's like, you know, a year or two down the road, you're like, hmm, yeah, that wasn't such a great idea because there's one outcome. There's only one outcome for every single piece of legislation ever passed. There's one similar outcome no matter what the legislation is, and it is an unintended consequence. There is always something that occurs from a piece of legislation that was not foreseen, every single time, good or bad, but an unforeseen impact. Jordan says, the judge being tried at all is clearly bigotry and targeting her because remember, everybody is the same under the law, unless it's for a lefty cause. Because it's different when Democrats do it, Yes, that is the standard. Things are different when democrats do them. Seven oh four number anonymous. As passing laws is hard, just abdicate all responsibility to the executive so they could just do whatever they want with no question. Right. Well, that's unfortunately what Congress has been doing my entire life. They just keep yielding more and more power to the executive branch. I've been opposed to this my entire adult life. But I recognize this is a minority viewpoint. See I am, as you know, Rush was the mayor of Real Villain. He always will be. I'm a citizen of Real vill That's where I try to live. What what can you do? What is the situation? What is actually occurring, and what has actually occurred is that members of Congress have been perfectly willing to abdicate responsibility and authority. It's easier for them. That's where we are, where we have been for a very long time. That's why in twenty fifteen I supported Rand Paul in the Republican primary. He was the only person saying we should seed back some of the powers that the executive branch has taken from the legislative branch. The legislature is supposed to be stronger than it currently is, and that's because the founders never thought that these jelly spined lawmakers would just give up all their control. I don't like it anymore than you. Here's a great idea. 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It's a direct ask for nullification, which the last time Democrats got really really excitable about trying to nullify federal law in order to protect their underclass of indentured servants and slaves, we ended up in a shooting war. So this is on brand historically speaking for Democrats. So we shouldn't be surprised that they don't want federal laws enforced in jurisdictions they control and where they want cheap labor. The defense attorney asked the jury to consider whether they were willing to accept the level of government overreach he and other attorneys argued was exemplified in the case. The problem was there wasn't any government overreach because there are laws, and so what it comes down to is whether or not she's above the law because she's a lawyer with a wardrobe change during their deliberations. Now, this gets to the splitting of the verdict. She was found guilty of the federal or sorry the felony offense, but acquitted on the misdemeanor charge. The jurors asked multiple times a couple of questions of the judge about whether or not Dougan needed to know exactly who immigration officers had come to the courthouse to arrest Okay, because again there were two charges. The lesser charge was concealment of the suspect, and so what the jury got hung up on was whether or not she needed to know who they were coming to take into custody, and they apparently could not come to a decision on that. The question went to the obstruction charge, and the US district Judge Lynn Adelman, who was apparently also a leftist, decided that, in fact, Dugan would need to have known the federal agent's target in order for the obstruction charge to apply. Prosecutors argued the inminantly against that decision. Now this again is the Wisconsin Examiner dot com. Prosecutors made their closing arguments in the federal trial asking jurors to consider what happens if judges decide which laws they want to follow based on their own personal beliefs. Jurors have to draw a line without which without that line quote, there is only chaos, and that chaos is what the rule of law is intended to prevent. Right. This only works, this whole experiment, this whole civilizational experiment here only works if we pass laws and we write them down, and then we follow what is written down. And when people take it upon themselves to say I am going to nullify that law, I'm not going to follow that law, and there's no repercussions for doing so, then you do not have rule of law. You have rule of man or woman. In this case, I mean I assume. I don't know how she identifies, but I'm just saying, like, that's what that's called is rule of man, rule of the individual, okay, And that is chaos because you and I are going to have different opinions about what laws you want to follow. I got a whole list of laws I would very much like to not follow, but I follow them because I expect repercuss if I don't. Calling immigration enforcement of polarizing issue nationwide, the prosecutor said that Dugan is not on trial for her personal beliefs. She's on trial because she stepped outside of the law. They played courtroom audio that was captured at the time of the incident, with Dugan talking with a court reporter named Joan Butts, okay, you can are you done? Giggling okay, talking with the court reporter Joan Butts and saying down the stairs, as well as Dugan saying I'll do it, I'll take the heat, and then Butts responds, I'd rather get in trouble, which speaks to intent and knowledge of forethought. They knew what they were doing was outside the law. The defense attorney delivered the closing argument, trying to poke holes in the prosecution's narrative. He said, this is a very important case. This is a very un unprecedented trial. Make no mistake, the government is trying to make an example out of Dugan. Okay, yeah, fine, okay. And the example is what that judges need to follow the law. Just because you have a wardrobe change into a black robe doesn't mean you get to ignore the laws that you don't like. We are all equal under the law. If I had done this, I would be prosecuted. He added that the jury had the power to check what he described as overreach. So once again, thank you defense attorney for making the point that he's asking the jury to participate in the nullification of federal enforcement. The jury was asked to consider whether they really believe that Dugan would put her career at risk for this criminal alien. Uh. Yes, she did, absolutely. And you know why you would only do this if you thought that you would not suffer any ramifications. Right, That's why a judge would act outside the law and open herself up to career suicide. Now, she probably has, you know, a long and fruitful career ahead of her as a talking head on Miss Now formerly MSNBC. Right, I'm sure she's going to make the rounds on the cable news shows and such. She'll be fine if she faces any jail time or anything at all like that remains to be seen at sentencing. As witness testimony in the trial against Dugan concluded Thursday morning, Milwaukee County judges and public defenders spoke about the confusion and questions they had about when Ice started arresting people at the County courthouse. I just don't know. So now all of a sudden, you got all these lawyers and all this, all these judges, like, we just don't understand what's going on. Can they walk in the hallways? Can they make arrests? And yes, yes they can. Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Katie Cagle and Judge Laura Gramlin Perez testified about emails that local judges were sending each other asking for guidance and sharing stories about people getting snatched out of their courtrooms and seeing ICE agents who would sit in their vehicles outside. WHOA does this mean Milwaukee County is cooperating with Ice? That's what they were worried about, because Milwaukee County is not cooperating with ICE detainer requests at the jail. Milwaukee Police Department has its own policies that limit its cooperation with ICE. See, so they're all talking about how do we continue our nullification efforts. That's what the judges are talking about. Again, very on brand historically speaking for Democrats. All right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news, slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself check dot ground, dot news, slash pace. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature your subscription. Then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground news as they make the media landscape more transparent. This is a seven oh four number. This is what I'm gonna start doing. By the way, when when people text in and they don't give me their name on the text line, I'm gonna take your ideas because I don't know who to attribute the comments or thoughts to. And if you have a really good point, I'm just gonna say that's my point. I'm just going to read it as if it's my own thought. Or you could just put your name on the text and then I will attribute it to you, but without attribution, or you know what I could do an anonymous source tells me on the text line, and this is a very good point. Seven oh four number makes the judge and the clerk of court that were caught on the audio tape trying to claim credit, like, who's going to take the fall for this helping this illegal alien, you know, duck out the back door of the court room. You know who will take the heat? I'd rather be the one that gets in trouble for it. Seven oh four number says they literally fought over who would take the blame because they knew there would be no repercussions and they knew they would get so many thumbs ups thumbs up from their constituents. That's a really good point, right. The only reason that you would do this is if you thought there were no repercussions that you would face. And in fact, if you're trying to take the heat, I'll take the heat. No, I'll get in trouble. I'll be the one. Like you know, there's probably some there. You're going to get some accolades. And we know that did occur. It occurred because the other judge that was sort of duped into helping this distraction effort, Judge Severa, she was in the courtroom next to Dugan. Dugan grabbed her and said, hey, come out into the hallway and wear your robe, and Judge Severa was like, I'm not so sure about that. This makes me uncomfortable because you don't wear your robe out into the hallway, she says. And I've never seen a judge walking around the halls of any courthouse wearing their robe. They usually take the robe off in there, you know, in the judge's quarters back behind the court room. Right when they're walking the halls, they're just in their suit and tie or whatever. So severa started getting messages from all these defense attorneys that were like, good job, because they thought she was in on the effort to obstruct and distract the ice officials so they would go down the hall. She walked them down the hall to go talk to the chief judge, who wasn't there, under this lie that they needed approval from the chief judge when they did not. And then the chief judge sends a text message to Dugan and says, we need to talk about this, and then follows up by saying, actually, let's not talk about it at all, because if we talk about it, you're going to incriminate yourself. He knew that what she did was wrong too. The only question was whether you would have an administration that would prosecute, and Dugan found out that there is now. And then the question is will a jury convict And she found out yes, a jury did convict her. She faces up to five years in prison and a three hundred and fifty thousand dollars fine for the felony conviction, but you could smell a butt coming. But as a non violent offender with the record of service to her community, she's unlikely to be sentenced to time behind bars. Her sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled. And by the way, I suspect that with a Democrat in the White House, she gets a pardon for all of this and gets her law license restored. But that's on the table right now. It's sentencing. Now, we don't know what the judge overseeing this case is going to do. By the way, kind of important to the story. Here's the person that she attempted to shield from legitimate legal consequences. The criminal illegal alien Flores Ruiz, was before Dugan for a pre trial hearing on three misdemeanor charges after allegedly pummeling a man with more than thirty punches during a March twelfth fight over loud music. That's according to the criminal complaint. The Mexican national previously deported from the US in twenty thirteen and free on a signature bond at the time, So that's a personal recognizance or unsecured bond or cashless bail like whatever you want to call it he was free on a signature bond. Also allegedly struck a woman who tried to intervene during the altercation. His victims were in the courtroom at the time this all went down, and the prosecutor was like, what the heck is going on? She was confused, and the victims were stunned when they saw the defendant their attacker. You get ushered out the back door in order to avoid deportation, and then they didn't get any of the justice that they had shown up in court to receive. That's the system that they are trying to implement. It's just shamee all right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.