The Supreme Court ruling that gave Donald Trump presidential immunity won’t save a judge from prosecution by the Trump Justice Department. At least not according to a decision this week that rejected a motion to dismiss from Hannah Dugan, the Wisconsin state judge who’s charged with concealing from arrest and obstructing the apprehension of a person wanted by immigration authorities for removal.
Unless Dugan’s lawyers appeal and get the ruling reversed, it brings her a step closer to trial in one of the criminal cases the administration has touted in Trump’s second term. The decision comes as the administration is having a tough time getting cases off the ground in Washington, D.C., where federal prosecutors in Jeanine Pirro’s office have been unable to even secure indictments in cases alleging assaults on agents amid the federal takeover of the nation’s capital.
Unless Dugan’s lawyers appeal and get the ruling reversed, it brings her a step closer to trial.
In Dugan’s failed motion to dismiss, her lawyers cited the Trump immunity case while arguing that she “has both immunity from conviction and immunity from prosecution.” But U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman ruled that the separation of powers concerns that animated Trump v. United States, which focused on protecting the president, “do not arise when one of the nation’s many judges is subject to prosecution.”
While acknowledging that Dugan raised “very real concerns,” the Clinton appointee wrote that the judicial defendant doesn’t get immunity “simply because some of the allegations in the indictment describe conduct that could be considered ‘part of a judge’s job.’”
The federal judge set a scheduling hearing for Wednesday that could shed light on the next steps in the state judge’s case.
Dugan, who has pleaded not guilty, was arrested in April in what The New York Times called “a major escalation in the Trump administration’s battle with local authorities over deportations.” That battle and the Republican administration’s broader effort to use the law to exert power over Democratic-aligned cities, groups and people is still raging today. In response to the ruling rejecting Dugan’s immunity claim, her lawyers said they were disappointed and that they “look forward to the trial which will show Judge Dugan did nothing wrong and simply treated this case like any other in front of her courtroom.” If the case goes to trial, then that would be another difference between it and the prosecution that prompted the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling. The high court’s decision came in July 2024, and the justices instructed the trial judge to apply the new ruling to Trump’s case. Before that litigation could be completed, Trump’s electoral victory in November led the DOJ to drop the case, citing its policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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