The MeidasTouch Podcast - Wow! Trump Arrest of Judge Blows Up in His Face

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas and Taking Feds host Harry Litman report on why the Trump DOJ / FBI arrest of Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan will very quickly backfire on Trump like most of his stunts. Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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free of charge bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with i gaming ontario the fbi arresting a state court judge alleging that a state court judge obstructed an immigration arrest operation that the feds wanted to do inside the judge's courtroom, which the FBI had then announced on Twitter, now X, and which the attorney general then posted on Twitter, now X. It's a sentence that would be unfathomable, Harry Littman, in normal times. courtroom to try to do an infiltration operation in a criminal proceeding that a judge was presiding over. This happened, just to remind everybody what I'm talking about, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, she's presiding over her daily docket last week. It was a case before her involving an alleged domestic violence incident. And these judges go through lots of cases. It's not just one case usually on the day,

and they go through their full docket of criminal cases. The feds, the FBI, they want to go into the courtroom. And for a state court judge in our system of federalism, I've never heard of without coordination or anything like sting operations taking place in state court judges courtroom. The allegations, if you just accept all the allegations basically being said by the FBI and DOJ as true, the feds last week, they want to get into the courtroom. Judge Dugan basically has this individual who's there, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, who ICE and the feds want to detain. And the judge, accepting all the allegations as true, which we don't necessarily know is the case from the feds and the DOJ, the judge then basically says to the individual, you know, you can go out the back door or, you know, and throws her and throws her in jail. Then the head of the FBI, Kash Patel, announces it on social media. Pam Bondi announces it on social media. And this seems to be one of these issues that the performative DOJ FBI want to say,

this guy was a bad guy, domestic violence. Look at his background. Who would ever want this guy? This judge was trying to help someone who beats his wife. I mean, really? This is a judge who does that? So they're doing that thing to try to divide public opinion on this issue, Harry, right? And make it seem like, how could you defend this judge doing it? But what they really want to do here is trample my view on

federalism, states' rights, federal rights, and start doing sting operations in state courts. And I'll toss it to you, Harry. One of the big issues that concerns me is that this guy who's charged with domestic violence, he showed up to court. And if the judge would have made the finding that he did it, he probably would have gone to jail for that. How many people now who could be charged with crimes because our system is, are you going to get thrown into El Salvador concentration camp? What's going to happen if into El Salvador concentration camp? What's going to happen if you show up to court? Are people just not going to show up to court anymore? And it's going to have a fundamental breakdown of law and order. That's how I thought about it. You break it down, Harry, from your lens as someone who was a leader in the DOJ and was the United States

attorney in Western District of Pennsylvania. All right. Let's start with the point you just made. Of course, Bondi makes a big thing about how this precipitated a chase on the streets, how dangerous that was. Your point is absolutely right, Ben. The bigger danger is people not showing up, including accused criminals. But my viewpoint as a former U.S. attorney and someone who worked with the FBI, I have no viewpoint because nothing like this could possibly happen. There was one case that the Trump administration brought in 2019 and the Biden administration dismissed against a state court judge. But at least in that case, the state court judge was deceptive, tried to hide the guy, had an off the record sidebar conference and the like. All Judge Dugan did was say,

not in my courtroom, not in my courtroom. By the way, six plainclothes FBI guys are showing up to make an example, and they want to use the state because these people have gone through, this is what they say anyway, the security apparatus are less likely to be armed. Guess what? Very strong principles that used to be articles of faith of the Republicans that you can't commandeer the state to do your business that way. So she did nothing other than control her courtroom and say, if you want to arrest him, don't do it in here. And they did arrest him. In order to be charged with obstruction under federal law, you need to have some corrupt act. That's what they tried to pin on that previous judge, Judge Joseph. I don't know what they're going to say about Dugan, except she said, oh, you can go out this exit, not that one. Again, it is her courtroom. So

we can say without the faintest doubt, super aggressive move to try to put the fear of the feds in the state court and in a municipality, Milwaukee, that has some allowance for trying to keep the feds from just imposing their anti-immigration policy. So they're wanting to make Dugan the sort of scapegoat for that. I don't think it'll fly. My best guess is the whole prosecution will collapse. But on top of everything else, that Patel and Bondi, the head of the FBI, the highest federal law enforcement officer on the land, come out and notwithstanding the presumption of innocence, absolutely tar this judge, compare her to a terrible Bondi, compares her to some kind of terrible machine gun welding harboring of a defendant. What happened here is she said, not in my courtroom. That's the thing we always have

to remember. And there are issues of judicial immunity, issues of what you can force the states to do. But I'm going to have, I have trouble seeing what the corrupt act is when she said, go ahead, arrest them. And by the way, they were negotiating with the chief judge in that courtroom at the same time, just not in my courtroom. I don't take kindly to having my criminal docket here and you guys are hovering out front waiting to collar somebody as soon as they get out. That's not the way you should treat your co-sovereign state court. So I think this was a purposeful kind of attempt to make an example of this sitting state judge. We would never have considered it, but to make an example of her and under circumstances where it's probably not going to

hold up in any event, you can say it's way over the top to try to make a big deal about their anti-immigration policy, you know, and just hovering outside a state courtroom without the judge's knowledge until she finds out on Twitter that they're there to arrest, you know, and just hovering outside a state courtroom without the judge's knowledge until she finds out on Twitter that they're there to arrest, you know, that's just not the way it works with co-sovereigns, federal and state system. When you and I do these videos together, we try focusing mostly on the legal stuff and really getting in the weeds and not so much the political. But there's a parallel here that I think is worth noting, you know, that the headline grabbing day that the Trump regime wanted was this thing happened. Look, we arrested a judge in Wisconsin who is look what we're going

to do. States, you need to get you need to be scared the same way they go for the headlines each day. 90 deals in 90 days. Yeah, we're doing, you know, and then it turns out as you dig deeper and you poke holes in it, it's all a bunch of BS and it all falls apart. So on their best case scenario, they had a day where they got a headline out and they got to tweet about it on Elon Musk's social media platform. But now this goes to federal court and a federal judge in Wisconsin and a judge, a federal judge is going to see a state court judge. You have to think these things through. Why is it a state court judge is going to walk in there with probably

army of the top lawyers pro bono who are going to be representing this judge. And there's going to be a lawyer now who the DOJ has to send in justifying this thing. Who's that guy going to be or gal going to be who's going to be there? A federal judge is going to say, what the hell did you do? You went into this. And from both a legal understanding of what the obstruction statute says, if you are a judge in your courtroom about to enforce justice against this individual in your own courtroom with your state law, how could you, and the person is showing up, you're obstructing what? The judge is saying, this person was here on a domestic violence charge. I'm a state court judge. If anything, this would be the great argument,

right? You obstructed my ability to be a state court judge and do what I was doing. If there's any obstruction here, it was you, the feds, you obstructed me. We were going to probably put this person in jail or make sure state law was applied. And you created this situation by doing it this way. Harry, I'll give you the final word on this topic. Yeah, well, just, you know, by the way, it's not just going into her courtroom, but this kind of big talk about it is exactly setting up the showdown that's going to happen. But this is one, Ben, you mentioned politics properly here because this has really been the story of the day. Once again, they've stepped on it. But the politics and the law coalesce here, because there is all kinds of doctrine. It was the sort of shining jewel of the Republicans around the year 2000 that says, you can't make the states

cooperate with you. There is a difference between forcing them to hand over or be complicit in an arrest and not obstructing. Had she hid the guy in her basement or whatever? Okay, fine, but that's not what we have. And now they're going to run broadside into doctrine much favored by right-wing judges about how you can't force states to be part and parcel of federal policy this way. And, you know, I told you there was another case before. It didn't get to this issue because they dismissed it, but this is where everything was teed up to be. So good luck with what they're going to say about this doctrine that they embraced so ardently before. There's something special people recognize in politics. But guess what? It's also there in law about coming in and trying to mess around and commandeer would be the legal word.

The state political and judicial system into doing federal policy. You know, I have a lot of issues, as people know, with this Trump administration. But almost foundationally, they're a bunch of losers. Like, this is a loser move to do that seems like what an annoying law student would, like, make a joke about, you know, during a class of a hypothetical. And you'll be like, can we just study for the final? Like, what are you talking about? Right. And they do, they do the thing and, and you're like, okay, I, I get it. And, and then, you know, look, there are people who are non-lawyers who will hear this story at first and go, okay, you know, maybe the judge shouldn't have done that. But then it's just one of those things that then becomes a death by a thousand blows and the holes get poked in it.

And then they end up losing and the Trump administration looks losing and they just look weak and it's pathetic looking. And it's just, it's not a good look. I'm not trying to help them out. I just, it bugs me to see a bunch of losers running this thing. I'm like, ugh, such a loser, lowbrow, like, ugh, move. Five more seconds. I want to give you two numbers. 90, the number of days he served.

108 now, the number of preliminary injunctions that courts have entered against his moves. And a lot of them Reagan appointees, George W. Bush appointees, Trump appointees. Yes, some Democratic appointees, but on balance, not a drastic difference of Democrat versus Republican judges. Anyway, Harry, Talking Feds YouTube, Talking Feds Substack, Talking Feds Podcast. Everybody, subscribe to all of those. Just search Talking Feds. Hit subscribe. It's where I get my legal news from. Thanks, Harry. Thank you, Ben. Can't get enough Midas? Check out the Midas Plus Substack for ad free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski and more. Sign up for free

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