Our British visitor “David Clayton” is highly offended and downright outraged by Judge Dugan’s arrest:

The FBI arresting a judge.

I am not surprised but probably not for the same reasons as you Neo. Your country and its constitution is being dragged into the mire by a liar who frightens his supporters into tolerating anything.

And you cheer him on. Doesn’t any of this excessive executive power worry you? The endless EO’s, the thoroughly cowed Congress and the imperilled judiciary.

Your entire constitution was written to prevent one man rule but one man is ruling.

Is there anything Trump will do that you won’t tolerate?

And here I thought that, to the David Claytons of the world (because he is hardly alone in his sentiments), no one is above the law. Apparently, however, judges are above the law, and can make up their own law and/or defy the actual law in order to assist a criminal illegal alien if they happen to feel so disposed.

Good to know.

And the law involved in the case was not something esoteric. Unlike the bizarre lawfare cases the left brought against Trump during the Biden years, in which the law was tortured and twisted and turned inside out and used in completely novel and previously-unthought-of ways in order to “get” him, the case in which Dugan decided to help the defendant was a pretty straightforward matter.

It is actually the left which will tolerate nearly anything – including, apparently, a judge who protects an illegal alien who is charged with beating up two people in a domestic assault – protects him from being arrested by letting him out a back door in order to evade apprehension by ICE. Because that’s a summary of the facts of the case.

More here:

[FBI director Patel said] “We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest.”

Dugan was charged with two criminal counts of “obstructing and impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the United States” and “concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest,” according to a criminal complaint unsealed Friday.

County court records show the undocumented immigrant in the Milwaukee case — Eduardo Flores-Ruiz — was set to appear in court on April 18 before Dugan for a pretrial conference in a case where he has been charged with three misdemeanor counts of battery/domestic abuse connected to an incident on March 12. The case is ongoing.

Federal prosecutors allege Flores-Ruiz illegally entered the U.S. from Mexico and was issued an Expedited Removal order in January 2013, according to a criminal complaint.

Bondi alleged that Flores-Ruiz beat his roommate and a woman so badly that they needed to be hospitalized and that he continued to be belligerent in the hospital before his arrest. …

“The courtroom deputy [later] saw Judge DUGAN get up and heard Judge DUGAN say something like ‘Wait, come with me,'” the complaint states. “Despite having been advised of the administrative warrant for the arrest of Flores-Ruiz, Judge DUGAN then escorted Flores-Ruiz and his counsel out of the courtroom through the ‘jury door,’ which leads to a nonpublic area of the courthouse.”

“So she continues, continues with her docket, finishes her docket. Two victims sit in court all morning long waiting and at the end. The prosecutors say ‘What happened? Why didn’t the case get called?'” Bondi said.

Seems pretty lawless to me.

No one is above the law, including a judge. Judges are not saints. In the past, some of them have even been convicted of crimes (for a list, please take a look at this). The criminal complaint against Dugan can be found here, with the details of the allegations against the judge. In addition, the situation is not new:

The case is similar to one brought during the first Trump administration against a Massachusetts judge, who was accused of helping a man sneak out a back door of a courthouse to evade a waiting immigration enforcement agent.

Prosecutors dropped the case against Newton District Judge Shelley Joseph in 2022 under the Democratic Biden administration after she agreed to refer herself to a state agency that investigates allegations of misconduct by members of the bench.

The Justice Department had previously signaled that it was going to crack down on local officials who thwart federal immigration efforts.

The department in January ordered prosecutors to investigate for potential criminal charges any state and local officials who obstruct or impede federal functions. As potential avenues for prosecution, a memo cited a conspiracy offense as well as a law prohibiting the harboring of people in the country illegally.

As far as Clayton’s idea of Trump as displaying “excessive power” goes, Trump didn’t invent immigration law or the concept of illegal aliens; he has been enforcing laws passed by Congress governing immigration, in accord with his own presidential powers over immigration which are given to presidents by the US Constitution. But I guess rogue judges are just fine with the left as long as they are members of the Trump “resistance.”

One can read more about the Massachusetts case against Shelley Joseph here. The allegations were quite serious – although not as serious as the Dugan case. From the article:

Late last year, the [Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct] filed formal charges against Joseph with the state’s highest court, a surprisingly forceful step for a body that has only gone so far five other times since 2000.

And that’s in ultra-liberal Massachusetts, so her offense was considered serious, even there. I can’t find any news of a ruling on Joseph so perhaps one hasn’t been made yet.